shall we quarrel with him if even there he should find that all is not gold which glitters, and should say so with the same honest bluntness with which he detects the sham of not a little which he hunted up, farther westward, with much pains, only to discover that great expectations are not always equivalent to great fulfilments. This is one of his better points as a traveller-that he knows what is "fuss and feathers" when he sees it, and does not hesitate to label it accordingly. He is one of those Americans, too, who is never ashamed of his own country, and has full faith in the government of the people by the people and for the people, as the highest style of social nobility and security.

5.-The Structure of Animal Life. York: Charles Scribner & Co. ard.]

By LOUIS AGASSIZ. 8vo. New 1866. [Boston: Lee & Shep

In accordance with the foundation of the Graham Lectures in Brooklyn, to which series the present course belongs, the distinguished naturalist addressed himself to the work of illustrating the "Power, Wisdom and Goodness of God," from the organisms of the animal creation. He pursues this object through such topics as the different plans of structure among animals; the relative gradation of the animal kingdom; remote antiquity of animal life as shown in the coral reefs; man the ultimate object of the physical history of the earth; triple coincidence in the succession, gradation, and growth of animals; evidence of an intelligent and constantly creative mind in the plans and variations of structure. These subjects are made popularly intelligible by the lecturer's transparent language and logic, and by the aid also of diagrams and other drawings, in the production of which those who have listened to him know how facile is his chalking on the blackboard.

The exordium of the first lecture will attract attention from the personal allusion with which the professor commences. He states the position of science as

"The questioning, doubting element in human progress; and when that has gone far enough, it begins the work of reconstruction in such a way as will never harm true religion, or cause any reasonable apprehension to the real and sincere Christian. Such is my conviction; and while I am considered on one side as an infidel, and decried on the other, in scientific circles, as a bigot, as one who follows the lead of a Creed rather than that of Science, I feel bound to say that I am neither; and that, if you will receive these lectures in the simplicity with which I offer them, you will find I have not deceived you." pp. 2, 3.

This claim for an independent prosecution of scientific researches

is wholly right. It is both morally and rationally necessary. No intelligent believer in the Bible need question it, or fear any danger from it to that revelation of truth, in the hands of an honest and competent investigator. A collision between the two, if God be the author of both, can no more occur, than between two parallel lines however far extended. But the question of moral purpose, of thorough research, is an open one in each individual inquiry, which every man must be willing fairly to meet who essays to determine the weighty issues here involved. The present work is a model in its department, both in the beautiful simplicity of its spirit, the easy handling of its materials, and in the tendency of its argument to confirm a religious faith in the character and government of a God able to create and worthy to rule the universe.

6.-The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; 1769-1791. Translated from the collection of Ludwig Nohl. By LADY WALLACE. With a portrait and facsimile. Two Volumes. 12mo. New York: Hurd & Houghton. 1866.

A GLIMPSE at Mozart, in the charming Musical Sketches by Elise Polko, gave us an idea of him as a golden winged humming-bird in the choir of human songsters, which aptly accords with the beautiful aerial face and figure of the maestro at the beginning of these volumes. Those liquid eyes take us captive at the first glance, and we dive into the letters upon which they threw their light, with an assurance of pleasure, and as if welcomed along by witching echoes of Eolian melody. They are full of the life of a delicate, sensitive, impassioned soul, open to the impression of everything pure, noble, lovely, dwelling in a world of its own, in which we only wish that it could so have dwelt as not to feel the sharp points of social meanness and hardness of heart, with which this child-man had to make a very close and life-long acquaintance.

This throws a sombre hue over the whole, which deepens as the years wear on. Mozart was poor, and his patrons dealt more in compliments than in solid benefits. He knew his own immeasurable superiority to all his musical rivals, but he was compelled to see pretentious mediocrity rewarded with the emoluments which were due to genius. Toiling in the most faithful spirit of art-devotion, to turn a wooden into a golden age, to educate his countrymen up to a standard of true taste and culture in his beloved studies, he wore himself out prematurely at his task, and died at thirty-five, with his unfinished Requiem in his hands-a touching emblem of his fragment of a life-work.

These letters are written in a delightfully off-hand, familiar,

ob

servant style, with a buoyancy which is perpetually gushing up through the melancholy of many an hour. They reveal a heart of womanly affectionateness, and manliest honor and generosity. The collection is of great value as a study of character. What a mockery almost are the praises now lavished on his name who was buried by one or two obscure friends in a literal" potter's field," where within a few months his own wife could not identify his grave, and it has never to this day been found! It is well that such genius and worth be recognized and honored even though late, rather than never; but it is a shame that a man like Mozart can live and toil in a civilized land, and be compelled to wait for his reward until it can do him no earthly good.

7.-Children in Heaven; or, the Infant Dead Redeemed by the Blood of Jesus; with Words of Consolation to Bereaved Parents. Large 12mo. Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication. 1866.

THE Old School Presbyterian church here enters its protest, in behalf of the Calvinistic sisterhood, against the charge so often and ignorantly made of her belief in the final perdition of all or any souls who die in infancy. Proofs are cited from such thorough Calvinists as Calvin, Toplady, the Synod of Dort, Thomas Scott, Gill, Junkin, that this dogma has never been taught in Calvinistic standards, or by any of that doctrinal school, save here and there an ultraist. The phrase in the Westminster Confession, "elect infants," is shown to have been intended to indicate, that all infants who die are of that number. It is shown with equal clearness that the theology which does consign these unfledged souls to "outer darkness" has its home in the churches, or sections of these, which hang the fact of salvation on the sacrament of baptism, as is done by all the highkeyed prelatists from Rome outward. Oxford must accept this impeachment as well as the modern Babylon. These are the cruel stepdames who shut the infant host out of Christ's "many mansions." Even John Wesley is not altogether clear on this record. In his Doctrinal Tracts, p. 251, published by the General Conference, he "boldly avows the sentiment that infants can not ordinarily be saved without baptism. If,' says he, infants are guilty of original sin, then they are proper subjects of baptism; seeing, in the ordinary way, they can not be saved, unless this be washed away by baptism. It has already been proved,' he adds, that this original stain cleaves to every child of man; and that hereby they are children of wrath and liable to eternal damnation."" pp. 12, 103.

The remainder, and, indeed, the bulk of this elegant volume, is

occupied with choicely selected extracts and contributions, in poetry and prose, consolatory to parents who have lost their children in early life. These selections are from sources so pure and high in literary and religious character, that the frequent perusal of them will not be likely to pall the interest which they may inspire. The volume is edited by one of the eminent men of that denomination, and is worthy of its subject, and of the church which sends it forth on its mission of consolation.

sketch of its Histo

By ABEL STEVENS,

8.-The Centenary of American Methodism. A ry, Theology, Practical System and Success. LL.D. 12mo. New York: Carlton & Porter. 1866. THE Methodist church in this country inaugurates its year of centennial jubilee by the issue of this volume, for popular circulation, the design of which is to show its membership what reasons it has r thanksgiving over the past, and for renewed efforts in the future. The task was committed to competent hands, and the result is an admirably arranged and lucid book, full of pertinent information, and as valuable for permanent reference as for immediate ends. Dr. Stevens answers historically, practically, and doctrinally, the question "What is Methodism?" largely exhibiting its working system, its capabilities and responsibilities prospectively. With such a record of earnest and successful labor for Christ and man, we can overlook what, at first sight, might savor a little of undue self-gratulation. We do not make this criticism on the temper of the work, albeit a kind of devout glamour might seem to glorify these pages to an outside spectator. But we shall never quarrel with any class of religionists for loving their own church and believing in it supremely, so far as church organizations are concerned.

We doubt if any other work will give the inquirer into this particular branch of church polity, so much of exactly the desirable sort of knowledge as he can gather from these pages. Appended to it is the Creed of the denomination, and the plan of the Jubilee-commemoration for the current year. This church evidently counts on securing a great momentum by these arrangements. So far as she is sowing the seed of a soundly Christian harvest, we bid her Godspeed. But so far as she grounds these hopes on a special expansion of her dogmatic basis, on which no little emphasis is here laid, we do not see our way to wish her marked progress. We esteem it rather an amiable weakness than a reliable intuition, which would regard the illogical and inharmonious theology of Wesleyan Methodism as the predestined doctrinal foundation of the Christian life of the Millennial age.

9.-The Women of Methodism: Its Three Foundresses. By ABEL STEVENS, LL.D. 12 mo. New York: Carlton & Porter. 1866.

No people understand the power of a popular denominational literature better than our Methodist brethren; or are more enthusiastic in building the sepulchres of their prophets. It is one secret of their almost unexampled esprit de corps. And, in truth, they are fortunate in the subjects of their hagiology—its simple, fervid, selfdenying, romantic missionary zeal. It is unquestionable that there was very much of this in the early movements of that church. As the years lengthen which throw that primitive devotion more remotely into the past, it is taking on a yet mellower hue of Christian purity; the ivy and the mosses are softly covering the rough and jagged rents of the real historic genesis. So, when a writer of the acknowledged skill and refined sensibility of Dr. Stevens puts his facile pen to these materials, we can not fail to have a book suffused all over with the sunset tints of a Protestant saintliness. This book is written at the instance of the American Methodist Ladies' Centenary Association, and forms a part of the jubilation of the current year by that religious society, being a companion volume to the last on our list. It includes sketches of Susanna Wesley, the Countess of Huntingdon, and Barbara Heck, who are thus elevated to the honors of the first three, with notices of many of their companions in the evangelical revival thus celebrated. It will be seen that the Methodist moveinent originally took in the Calvinistic element as no small part of its propulsive force. The power of this mainly survives in the British Dissenting churches. We need say no more about the volume than that it is as attractive as a good religious novel, while it not only is "founded on fact" (a very loose phrase as currently employed) but is fact in an unusually high and pure region of Christian experience.

10.-A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Genesis. With a New Translation. By J. G. MURPHY, D. D., T. C. D., Professor of Hebrew, Belfast. With a Preface by J. P. THOMPSON, D. D., New York City. 8vo. pp. 535. Andover: Warren F. Draper. Boston: Gould & Lincoln. New York: Hurd & Houghton. 1866.

DR. MURPHY is a native of County Down, village of Comber, near Belfast, a scholar of Trinity College, Dublin, and a member of the Presbyterian church. In 1847, he received his present position of Professor of Hebrew in the Assembly's College, Belfast. He is the