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is appointed to select the missionary stations in Africa, and after some months' absence, and performing an acceptable service for the society by whom he is employed, he returns, and for fifteen years is employed in travelling from town to town through the counties of England, and communicates wherever he goes a portion of his own burning zeal. He is at length settled over a parish in Walton, in performing the parochial labors of which, and in public agencies, and in attending missionary meetings, far and near, he spends the remainder of his days, if with strength abated, at least with zeal unimpaired. He died at the age of sixty-three, leaving behind him a number of useful works on practical relig ion, and a position of moral authority and influence which has won for him lasting honor and gratitude in the Christian Church.

General History of the Christian Religion and Church: from the German of DR. AUGUSTUS NEANDER. Translated from the last Edition. By JOSEPH TORREY, Professor of Moral and Intellectual Philosophy in the University of Vermont. Volume Fourth. Boston Crocker & Brewster. : 1851. 8vo. pp. 651.

WE feel under very great obligations to the accomplished translator of this work for his persevering labor in a task to which but few of our German scholars would be equal. He gives us reason to hope that we shall yet have the work complete, according to Neander's first and unchanged purpose, which was to bring the history down to the times of the Reformation. This is incomparably the best history of the Christian Church that has ever appeared. The thorough scholarship of the author, his eminent fidelity, his life-long devotion to studies which presented his theme under all its relations, his freedom from all unworthy biases, and the childlike simplicity of his character, all qualified him for his work.

The present volume, which contains the fifth volume of the original, and gives us all which had appeared in print up to the time of the author's death, embraces topics of high interest in all the bearings of the one great theme, historical, biographical, controversial, devotional, political, and personal. The wildest romance, the intensest interest of tragedy, alternate with dry scholastic topics. As we glance over the volume, preparatory to its thorough perusal, we say to ourselves, How strange a thing is the history of the Christian Church! How precious is that Gospel, the power and beauty of which can illuminate the sad and melancholy annals of the follies and sins of ages, while it utters a holy comment upon all that has transpired in connec

tion with its own patient struggles to bless its friends and its foes!

Discourses and Essays on Theological and Speculative Topics.
By REV. STEPHEN FARLEY. Boston: Office of the "Christian

Register." 1851. 12mo.
12mo. pp. 400.

WITHIN the same hour our eye fell upon this volume and upon the announcement of the decease of its author. While he lay upon his death-bed, an affectionate daughter wrote down at his dictation a paragraph of the Preface, which, with a modest appeal to the patronage of the public, introduces the volume to a kindly reception. The author had his full share in life's trials, and he bore them with Christian meekness. During his settlement as a pastor, his views were those in which he had been educated, Calvinistic; and, like many of his contemporaries, he worked his own way to the light of the simple Gospel. A Scripture motto introduces each of the Essays in his volume. These are written in a simple style, and with that directness and force of statement which befit the familiar themes of which they treat, -the great religious topics of thought and popular instruction as drawn from the Bible. We hope that the work will find a welcome among those who knew the author, and who sympathized with him under his burdens. Many of our readers will recogize in the volume some pieces which they have perused in years gone by in the columns of the "Christian Register."

Scenes and Legends of the North of Scotland. By HUGH MILLER. From the Second London Edition. Boston: Gould & Lincoln. 1851. 12mo. pp. 436.

WE have been informed we know not whether on good authority that Mr. Miller was not anxious that this collection of his early writings should appear again. If this be true, he may have thought that his proud reputation as a man of science would not be advanced by drawing any attention to himself as a story. teller and a gatherer of traditions. In such a fancy he would be under a mistake. We believe the present delightful volume will win him a host of new readers. There is no country in the world which has such materials for interesting narratives of the kind here presented as Scotland. Rich in the lore of the heart, in all domestic incidents, in all wild legends, in all devout expe. riences and enterprises, as well as in many themes which lack the consecrating element, is that old land of the North. We advise the lovers of these rural, household, and mountainous scenes to possess themselves of Mr. Miller's charming volume.

The Literature and the Literary Men of Great Britain and Ireland. By ABRAHAM MILLS, A. M., Author of Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, &c. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1851. 2 vols. 8vo. pp. 576, 598.

THE value of these two formidable volumes will depend upon the size and extent of the library into which they may ask admission. They will serve the purposes of a biographical dictionary of authors, and of a compend of literary extracts, and, so far, they will be of service to a large class of readers. They have no higher value, however, on the score of original criticism or more extensive research. Why the compiler has not, in express terms, acknowledged the amount of his indebtedness to the great work of Chambers (from which he has taken, without credit, scores of pages), we are at a loss to conceive. He could not suppose that the fact would pass unnoticed, and if he expected that his readers would take for granted so free a use of the labors of another, Mr. Mills must have contented himself with looking for a very moderate award to his own work.

The volumes contain forty-six lectures. Biography, history, criticism, and extracts, selected according to the compiler's taste and judgment, contribute to their contents. These will afford to readers of limited information a sufficiently copious treatment of the great theme which would not be exhausted by a hundred volumes.

The History of the Restoration of Monarchy in France. By ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE. Vol. I. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1851. 12mo. pp. 530.

THE same mental qualities which would render Lamartine incompetent to write a sober history of a rational people, and of an ordinarily conducted series of events in the development of human fortunes, admirably fit him to write about France and the French, during the last half-century. His skill is marvellously suited to his themes and his materials. His brilliant style, his pictorial language, his command of metaphor, his gifts in the understanding and appreciation of such characters as he has to delineate, have enabled him to write about the recent fortunes of his own land, just as they ought to be written about. He now proposes to write the history of both Restorations. So far he has done well. Here we have Napoleon, Alexander, the Count d'Artois, Louis the Eighteenth, Talleyrand, and the Duke d'Enghien, all drawn to the life, with confident judgments passed upon them, and occasionally the revelation of a secret which we are to

receive on the author's credit. Lamartine says that he wrote his portrait of Marie Louise in her presence. His description of Napoleon's personal appearance is graphic and unreserved. We wait with considerable curiosity the subsequent pages of the tragi-comical history of the "volatile people."

Rule and Misrule of the English in America. By the Author of "Sam Slick, the Clock-Maker." New York: Harper & Brothers. 1851. 12mo. pp. 379.

THERE is a defiant spirit, a sort of recklessness in assertion, and a wild sweep of censorious judgment shown in this volume, which abate largely from the character which it seeks to deserve, as a judicious and fair essay upon a very pregnant theme. Judge Haliburton proceeds upon an idea which has been frequently advanced, and to authenticate which a formidable array of facts may be adduced. He maintains that the New England colonies always proceeded, in civil and ecclesiastical matters, as if they were, from the very beginning, independent of the mother country. So far as plausible pretensions were needed to cover this rebellious temper, when it would have been perilous to exhibit it openly, he is ready to show how easily they were assumed, and how successfully they deceived the authorities at home. To the blindness of Old England, when sharp sight would have been of service, and to an obstinate wilfulness when her eyes were partially opened, Judge Haliburton attributes the loss of her American colonies.

Episodes of Insect Life. By ACHETA DOMESTICA, M. E. S. New York: J. S. Redfield. 1851. 3 vols. 8vo. pp. 320, 326, 432.

THE press has not made us a richer present through the whole year, than in giving us a fac-simile reprint of the English edition of these three most charming and delightful volumes. The authoress, who takes the name of the "House Cricket," must have in her composition the elements of a most genial nature. She has here arrayed the wonderful little creatures which we call "insects" in all the artificial draperies of our human conventionalities, besides making a marvellously ingenious use of their own natural wealth of dress in the enrobings of their little frames. No one can pass the most insignificant insect unobserved, after having read these volumes, or fail to have some quaint moral or some

fanciful conceit start up in his mind in connection with their characteristic shapes and habits. Nor can any one feel sure that any thing advanced in these volumes is exaggerated, or untrue in substance. Who knows but that God has made these little creatures to be our monitors and our satirists ? We most heartily commend these volumes to our readers, for their wealth of wisdom, as well as for their ingenuity of fancy. The volumes treat, respectively, of the insects of spring, summer, and autumn, and the morals which come from them will add new counsels to the rich instruction of the changing year.

The Life of John Sterling. By THOMAS CARLYLE. Boston: Phillips, Sampson, & Co. 1851. 12mo. pp. 344.

JOHN STERLING was known, in life, to a small circle of admiring friends, among whom was Carlyle, as a man of an amiable and genial nature, not gifted or profound. There was no remarkable circumstance attending his brief career. For a short time he was a curate in the English church, and was one of that brotherhood in his profession whose sad confessions have been published, as giving their testimony to a state of mind, whether healthful or morbid, which was left unsatisfied by any form of Christian faith that relies upon the integrity of its historical records. We cannot but think that all these men have labored under a spiritual hypochondria, and that they have mingled their own "inarticulate groanings," and their exaggerated sensibilities, with the statement of the actual difficulties which invest revealed religion. Sterling was but thirty-eight years old when he died. He committed to two friends, Archdeacon Hare and Thomas Carlyle, his literary character and his printed works. Dr. Hare edited a collection of these writings, and prefixed to them a Memoir of the author, which fully satisfied our own idea of what friendship and fidelity to truth demanded of him. Some friends of Sterling, Carlyle among them, with, of course, better means of judging than we can have, thought otherwise. Hence this second Memoir. Its author, in phrases every way becoming and respectful towards his clerical co-executor, affirms that he made too much of Sterling's heresy, representing it as too large an element in the man and in his life, and so has failed to delineate the image of his being. We are glad that any reason or motive could be found for another Memoir, seeing that it was to be written by Carlyle, and is what it is. We do not think that Carlyle has gone to the other extreme, in his view of the bias of Dr. Hare's Memoir. Repeating what we have already expressed, that an exaggerated and unreasonable degree of importance has

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