must always be a morbid life, for the mind is like a self-acting camera, if you give it no other pictures to reflect, it will reflect its own likeness in endless repetitions, and at every imaginable and possible focus; producing strange distortions, exaggerations, stupidities, and then takes these for the real self. Was it so with me? I scarcely know. I only know this, that of late the magic of co-operation has drawn me away from my own immediate griefs. Screen

No. 2 no longer brings a sigh, I can look at it without a pang of regret, can enjoy the ripple of its beech-leaves without thinking of the loss that the Royal Academy has endured, and I have no further useless wishes about its presence near my coffin. But I have still a lingering wish that she may see it some day, and spend just one thoughtful moment But for her it had never been

near it. painted.

Social Reform in England. By Lucien Davesès de Pontès. Translated by the Widow of the Author. With Appendices by the Translator. Pp. 409. London and New York: Cassell, Petter, and Galpin.

THIS is a translation of the 'Etudes sur l'Angleterre,' recently issued from the French press in a second edition, in which the work was considerably enlarged, partly with many pages that had been omitted from want of space in the 'Revue des Deux Mondes,' where the first two articles originally appeared, and partly with appendices carrying on the history of British crime and pauperism to the present day. These appendices,' we are told, have been added by the widow of the author, at the desire of several individuals interested in the cause of humanity, who believe that the main objects of M. de Pontes, the welfare of society, the relief of suffering, and the reformation of the criminal, will be promoted in France by some information on what has been done on the other side of the Channel during the last seven years for the improvement of the condition of the poorer classes, and by the assurance that the introduction of a portion at least of the Irish system, so warmly approved by the author, into the penal discipline of England, has been already attended with the most encouraging results.' In offering to the English public an English edition of the Etudes,' the translator states further that the appendices, however inadequate, are at least the result of careful investigation and personal acquaintance with the subject, aided by the know

ledge and experience of some of those to whose untiring efforts the improvements she has recorded have been mainly due.' The translation, we may add, is dedicated to her own and her departed husband's dear and honoured friend, Matthew Davenport Hill, to whose unwearied exertions in the cause of humanity the improvements of penal discipline in England are in a great degree due.'

The contents of this valuable volume are three essays, with appendices, and fragments of two other essays; on the Moralisation of the Dangerous Classes; on the History of Pauperism in England; on Woman in England; on English Elections; and on the Territorial, Judicial, and Political Divisions of Great Britain.

In part the first of the first essay, the author treats of industrial schools, reformatories, lodging-houses for the poor, and prisons. He alludes here, also, to the evils of intemperance, with which the United Kingdom Alliance undertakes to deal. His reference to the Alliance suffices to show that he did not survey the field of British philanthropy without striving to include all its salient points. After describing the evils of intemperance, he says:-Struck with these terrible facts, Mr. Hill, the eminent Recorder of Birmingham, in his address to the grand jury, does not hesitate to propose the prohibition of all fermented liquors, without even the exception of beer; but, to obtain this prohibition, he addresses himself, not to the Government, but to the nation itself the majority of the nation. The learned recorder has come to the con

clusion that it will be impossible to suppress the abuse so long as the practice itself exists, or, in fact, that in this case the use and abuse are inseparable from each other. Would this prohibition be in accordance with the constitution? Can the public interest authorise the majority of the nation in interfering in the private life of their fellow-subjects to such an extent as to forbid a practice which, to the greater part of mankind, is attended with no evil result whatever? Mr. Hill replies in the affirmative. He maintains that the majority do possess the right of imposing certain limits on the personal liberty of the minority, because, as the Poor Law compels all those who obtain an independent livelihood by their own labour to support those who cannot, or will not, support themselves, the former have decidedly the right to resort to such measures as may tend to diminish the burden imposed upon them.

* * *

He acknowledges that to make the action of a prohibitive law, interfering with the daily affairs of private life, work well, or even tolerably, presents enormous difficulties. But he does not regard these difficulties as insuperable; and he urges that, considering the immense importance of the object in view, it is worth while at least to make the attempt. Nor is this language the expression of an individual opinion. Mr. Hill is in this but the interpreter of a widely-spread belief, the propaganda of which has become the object of one of those pacific agitations which in England have so often achieved the ultimate triumph of principles and projects, at first regarded as inadmissible or impracticable. A vast association has been founded within the last two years, under the title of the United Kingdom Alliance, the National Temperance League, with the purpose of effecting this great reform. Presided over by Sir Walter Trevelyan, this society has thirty-three vice-presidents, an executive committee composed of twenty-one members, and a great number of agents in almost every part of the United Kingdom. Among its adherents it includes a portion of the ministers of the various religious communities, and all the members of the old temperance societies. Its principal seat is at Manchester. It publishes a daily journal, with the aim of obtaining a legislative enactment for the total and immediate suppression of all traffic in fermented liquors.'

The errors in this statement will have struck all our readers. But it must be remembered that it was published in 1858, at a time when the object of the Alliance and its very name were as yet very little known in this country; when, therefore, for a Frenchman to be aware of its existence was to be in advance of nine-tenths of our own countrymen. During the nine years which have since elapsed, the Alliance has made great progress,- -a fact of which the translator shows herself not unaware, by appending a footnote indicating the judgment of her late husband in attaching importance to the operations of the Alliance at that early period, and mentioning, amongst other signs of its progress, the £50,000 fund. In the second part of the first essay the writer treats of penal reform, and gives interesting accounts of Pentonville, Millbank, and the Irish prisons. In an appendix the translator supplies a useful summary of changes subsequently effected, down to May, 1866.

The history of pauperism in England is the theme of the second essay. We find here notices not only of workhouses and refuges, but also of friendly societies, workmen's halls, clubs, colleges, combinations and strikes, matters which would consider themselves insulted by being linked with pauperism, as that word is usually understood. However, the essay, which begins with the earliest times, is a very interesting one; and is made complete by the excellent continuation appended by the translator. The remaining essays in the volume contribute, with those we have thus briefly noticed, to prove that the lamented author had not only the disposition to confer a great benefit on his own countrymen by laying clearly before them the course taken by the great ameliorative efforts of recent times in Great Britain, but also the ability and the patience requisite to possess himself to a large extent of the facts. To English readers this translation supplies an opportunity of obtaining a sketch of the history of philanthropic enterprise in their own country, which will serve as a very useful remembrancer of past errors and successes.

The writer was no narrow-minded man; he was a Frenchman, who loved so well his own country, that he thought it important it should be informed of all that was worthy of imitation amongst foreigners. And the translator of his

work shows herself fully worthy to share in the noble sympathies of her patriotic and philanthropic husband.

The Christian Year Book; containing a Summary of Christian Work, and the Results of Missionary Effort throughout the World. London: Jackson, Walford, and Hodder, 27, Paternoster Row.

THIS volume is the result of an endeavour 'to present in an extended form the statistics of all the principal societies of every denomination throughout the world that are directly engaged in the work of evangelisation. The want of such a handbook has often been felt, for the purpose of showing what agencies are in operation, and the spheres in which they labour. This being a first, and consequently a tentative effort, the editor cannot venture to hope that no omissions or mistakes will be found, but he confidently believes that, as a whole, the statistics given will be found trustworthy.' As sources whence he has drawn his facts and statistics, the editor mentions Evangelical Christendom,' The Neue Evangelische Kirchenzeitung,' Zellers 'Kirchliche Statistik,' Zalomans Jaerboekje,' Berlepschs Schweizerkunde,' and a 'Rapport par M. F. de Rougemont, sur l'Etat Religieux des Peuples de l'Europe Orientale,' read at the Geneva Conferences in 1861; also a multitude of reports of societies, British, European, and American, and the contributions of correspondents.

The work is opened with a general review of the year 1866; and it afterwards proceeds to supply statistics of the various denominations in England and Wales, accounts of the governing bodies and general associations, Home, Foreign, and Colonial Missions, Bible, Tract, and Book Societies, and Societies for Jews, Sailors, Army, Navy, Sunday Schools, Foreign Education, Defence of Protestantism, Chapel Building, and so forth. England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales are dealt with in detail under these and other heads; as also are America, Canada, Nova Scotia, and other colonies, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, Holland, Germany, Austria, Poland, Lithuania and Russian Poland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Russia, Turkish Empire, Borneo, Arabia, Siam, Burmah, India, China, Japan, Madagascar, Algeria, West, South, and East Africa, South America, South Seas, &c., &c. Some statistics of the Roman

Catholic Church are given; the number of Jesuits, monks, and nuns throughout the world; the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, &c. We have, besides all this, an obituary for the year; with chapters on Christian Union, Religious Liberty, Evangelisation of London, an appendix, an index of societies, and another of places. All this is supplied in a cloth-bound volume of 358 pages.

Words of Comfort for Parents Bereaved of Little Children. Edited by William Logan, author of the Moral Statistics of Glasgow,' &c.; with an Introductory Sketch by the Rev. William Anderson, LL.D., Glasgow. Third edition, enlarged. Pp. 492. London: James Nisbet and Co., Berner's-street.

HAVING lost a beloved child by death, the compiler of this volume placed together letters of comfort received from his friends, and as many extracts from sermons, essays, and the writings of the poets as he could amass, bearing on the decease of children, and intended to contribute to the consolation of the bereaved. In a couple of editions the compilation grew to a goodly volume, and it is still further enlarged in the just published third. There are many readers, we doubt not, who, like ourselves, would willingly spare much of the prose portion of the volume. We know, indeed, that persons exist who have been so unhappily brought up that the proof that little children's angels do always behold the face of the Father who is in heaven, requires to be distinctly and elaborately made, otherwise they would mourn over departed babes with a worse mourning than Rachel's; for she only mourned that her children were not, whereas they would lament the very existence of theirs. To prove little children out of hell seems about as bootless and weariful a work, as to prove light and heat in the sun's beams, or beauty and glory in the rich skies of evening and of dawn. The attempted demonstration is an impertinence hardly to be forgiven.

In a preliminary historical sketch of the Question of the Salvation of Deceased Infants,' by Dr. Anderson, it is stated that when, fifty years ago, Common Sense, warming into life out of its dreadful torpidity, began to vindicate the character of God, the rights of Christ, and the feelings of humanity, it

was with hesitancy and bated breath, and amid suspicions of their soundness in the faith, that a few voices were heard suggesting the possibility that all who die in infancy are saved.' But more than twice fifty years ago, it was taught distinctly by a writer of whom Dr. Anderson knows nothing, that all infants, not only those of Christian people, but those also of all heathen nations, go to heaven as a matter of course, and without any reservation. Be it known,'

he said, that every infant, wheresoever he is born, whether within the Church or out of it, whether of pious parents or of wicked parents, is received by the Lord when he dies, and is educated in heaven.' 'As soon as infants are raised from the dead, which takes place immediately after their decease, they are carried up into heaven, and delivered to the care of angels of the female sex, who in the life of the body loved infants tenderly and at the same time loved God.' When infants die, they are still infants in the other life. They possess the same infantile mind, the same innocence in ignorance, and the same tenderness in all things. They are only in rudimental states introductory to the angelic, for infants are not angels, but become angels. Every one, on his decease, is in a similar state of life to that in which he was in the world, an infant in a state of infancy, a boy in a state of boyhood, and a youth, a man, or an old man, in the state of youth, of manhood, or of age; but the state of every one is afterwards changed. The state of infants excels that of all others, because they are in innocence, and evil is not yet rooted in them by actual life, for innocence is of such a nature, that all things of heaven may be implanted in it, because innocence is the receptacle of the truth of faith and of the goodness of love.' Such were the declarations of one whom the world insists on treating as a mystic and a dreamer, whilst in this, as in so many other points, it is gradually adopting the doctrines that he taught.

Of the rest of the volume for which we are indebted to Mr. Logan, we can speak with very great satisfaction. We do not suspect that there is anywhere such a collection of poetic pieces motived by the death of children, as he gives us here. Even very commonplace versifiers, when they write about children from whom they are parted by death, rise above themselves, and pro

duce what cannot be read without emotion, sometimes not even without tears. And besides a large number of verses by such writers, we have here some by several of the best English poets of our age. So that, on the whole, the book is one that every reader should be eager to obtain and thankful to possess.

Studies for Sunday Evening. By Lord

Kinloch. Pp. 336. Second Edition. Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas. "WHAT is contained in the following pages,' says the author in his preface, is a portion of the thoughts which have been written down by me in connection with my perusal of the Holy Scriptures. In the statement of these thoughts is expressed my reading of God's Testimony, on some topics of general interest. I now venture to present these Scripture studies, in the hope of still further illustrating the entire harmony of Evangelical doctrine with sound practical reason.'

Thirty-four discourses on topics indicated by as many texts of Scripture, are included in this handsomely-printed volume. Amongst the topics are 'The Conversion of Nicodemus;' 'Inconsiderateness;' 'Christ's Presence;' 'A Sermon Stopped; 'Possessing the Sins of Youth;' 'Saved by Faith;' The Purpose of Election; Christian Reserve; The One Mediator;' The Necessity of Miracles; Ministering Spirits;' The Joy of Forgiveness;' The Law of the Sabbath; The Resurrection of the Body.' On the subject last-named, Lord Kinloch has not advanced beyond the dogma, fast growing obsolete, of a material resurrection. Throughout the series of discourses, he thoughtfully and calmly deals with great questions of life and Scripture, from an Evangelical' standpoint. That his book has been received not without favour, is shown by its having reached a second edition.

Hints on Worship; What it may, or should, and must be. Thirty-two Questions for the Consideration of Ministers and Leaders of Evangelical Christian Worship. Proposed by Carey Tysoe. London: Elliot Stock, 62, Paternoster Row.

MR. Tysoe's questions would seem to point to a division of public worship into two parts; one for the miscellaneous congregation, and another for

the real devoted, deep-hearted Christian members. He seems to think it wrong for the latter class to sing hymns and offer prayers suited to their own states in the presence of persons who could not join in uttering such words with sincerity. At present, the onus of discrimination in this matter is thrown on every person in the congregation: each for himself is required to judge how far he can honestly take the given words upon his tongue, and if he thoughtlessly or intentionally plays the bypocrite, he does so at his own peril. Mr. Tysoe, it seems, would relieve him in many cases from this duty, and would shut him out, we suppose, even as a spectator, from all such acts of worship as he could not sincerely adopt as his own. We should then have an exoteric and an esoteric service, and the only exercises of public worship open to undecided persons would be such mere general and vague expressions of praise and supplication as all persons might be supposed equally able to participate it. But Mr. Tysoe seems to forget that every act of public Christian worship presupposes itself performed by genuine Christian people in some stage of their religious life, whether initial or more advanced; that praise and prayer from the lips of others must of course be devoid of the essence of true Christian worship, and must be, therefore, either a meant bypocrisy or a mistake. But between those who can and those who cannot rightfully join in worship, who is to judge? Who, indeed, can judge, except each heart for itself? What man shall say to another, you have no right to worship? Or shall dare to pronounce impossible the sudden acquiring of such a right, even in the case of the worst? And so the onus of discrimination is left, and, as it seems to us, is rightly left, upon the conscience of each person present, whether and to what extent he will sing the words of hymns, or will join in the speaking of prayers and of responses. And the whole full diapason of Christian experience is sounded, that there may be due expression for all.

Devout Moments Expressed in Verse;

a Selection from Time's Treasure. By Lord Kinlock. Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas. FIFTY-TWO poetical pieces on religious topics, in something of the manner of George Herbert.

The Drink we Consume: A Reply to the Fallacies of Dr. Inman. By Henry Munroe, M.D., F.L.S., Lecturer on Medical Jurisprudence and Histology at the Hull and East Riding School of Medicine, &c. London: F. Pitman, 20, Paternoster Row. Manchester: Alliance Office, 41, John Dalton-street.

THE learned doctor who assails the fallacies of Dr. Inman in this tract, adopts as his motto the truly heathen saying, Si vult mundus decipi, decipiatur;' but sets himself in a right Christian opposition to it, by endeavouring in his pamphlet to disabuse the world of the delusions practised upon it by the advocates of alcohol, the doctors' friend. All that Dr. Munroe does in this field deserves the gratitude of the temperance reformer. We desire for this tract a wide circulation.

The Best, Cheapest, and Most Delicious Food, and How to Cook it. Adapted to the Wants of Society consequent on the Present High Price of Butcher's Meat. London: J. Burns, Progressive Library, 1, Wellington Road, Camberwell.

CONTAINS recipes for making bread without fermentation or baking powder; and for constructing really wholesome pie crusts and puddings. Professes to teach also how to preserve fruit with half the cost of the sugar at present used; and to give novel directions for cooking vegetables, and preparing wholesome, substantial, elegant, and economical dietary, with the least possible quantity of animal food. appendix are some valuable suggestions as to washing and cleaning, beverages, cordials, medicines, &c.

In an

Ellerslie House; or, Stick to Your Principles. A Book for Boys. By Emma Leslie. Pp. 216. London: S. W. Partridge, 9, Paternoster Row. In this story the author has designed to illustrate and enforce the necessity of a firm resistance to wrong-doing, and the exercise of moral courage in abiding by a conscientious discharge of duty, in spite of the opposition of others.

This design she has very well accomplished. No ordinary boy could withhold himself from reading the tale if it were placed in his hands; and he must be an extraordinary boy indeed, who could remain altogether unimpressed by its lessons of honest and manly piety.