WHITTIER'S "SNOW-BOUND."*-Before the cold weather vanishes and the fires go out on the-we cannot say hearth-stone-in the hot-air furnaces and air-tight stoves, and the rest of the un poetical substitutes for the ancient hearth-stone, we counsel our friends to read-if possible aloud, and to the family circle in the evening this charming little poem of Whittier. It is the picture of a winter evening in a rural part of New England, when the family are shut in by a snow-storm, and of the path-cleaving labors of the day following.

There are passages replete with pathos; and the whole poem is a gem of its kind. Whittier's verse is occasionally unpolished, but always inspired by true poetic feeling.

THE WORKS OF EPICTETUS.-Epictetus, of Hierapolis in Phrygia, was a freedman, who taught the Stoic philosophy, first at Rome, then at Nicopolis, in Epirus. His pupil, Arrian, compiled from his teachings eight books of commentaries, of which four are still extant. These commentaries, the manual (Encheiridion) which is brief, and a few fragments, are the only sources of our knowledge respecting his doctrine. The energy and excellence of the sentiments which he uttered upon human life and duty, have rendered these works attractive to thinking men. They present an ennobled and purified form of the philosophy of the porch. The present volume is the old English translation of Elizabeth Carter, as revised by Mr. Higginson.

Snow-Bound." A Winter Idyl. By JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1866. 16mo. New Haven: Judd & White. Price $1.25. The Works of Epictetus. Consisting of his Discourses in Four Books, the Encheiridion and Fragments. A translation from the Greek, based on that of Elizabeth Carter. By THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. 1866. Price $2.50.

ALDEN'S ELEMENTS OF INTELLECTUAL PHILOSOPHY.*This small volume should be styled studies in Intellectual Philosophy, rather than elements of the science. It is not the less interesting for that reason, though it may not be so useful for the purposes of teaching. It consists of a series of remarks upon the principal topics with which the science of the mind is concerned, arranged in brief chapters. These remarks embrace many of the most important definitions, with many sensible and acute critical observations, suggested by the defective and incorrect statements of leading philosophers. Like very many text-books upon this subject, it presupposes that the reader will have before him the works of the authors who are criticised, or that the few sentences which are quoted will suffice to awaken an interest in their opinions and theories. The author overlooks the circumstance that he writes from a full knowledge of, and a strong interest in these theories, while his readers are ordinarily not sufficiently acquainted with the facts and truths to which these theories relate to enter into the import of the questions which concern them.

The author has read extensively the leading English writers, and some of his criticisms upon Hamilton and others do great credit to his acuteness. The style of the work is lucid, and the illustrations are apt and enlivening. In the hands of a capable instructor, it might be a serviceable text-book. To the student who has thought and read somewhat upon the science, it will prove a very interesting and useful volume.

MASSACHUSETTS ECCLESIASTICAL LAW.t-This work is one of much value to Congregationalists. It embraces a condensed, but lucid, survey of the history of ecclesiastical legislation in Massachusetts. The present condition of the law in that State is accurately defined. Abundant references are made to legal decisions, and also to theological reviews and other writings, which have a bearing on the subject. Every page shows great carefulness and research. The author is a lawyer by profession, but a gentleman whose legal lore coexists with a vein of humor, which

* Elements of Intellectual Philosophy. By Rev. JOSEPH ALDEN, D. D., LL. D. late President of Jefferson College, New York. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1866. 12mo. pp. 292. New Haven: H. C. Peck.

+ Massachusetts Ecclesiastical Law. By EDWARD BUOK, of the Suffolk Bar. Boston: Gould & Lincoln. 1866. New Haven: Judd & White.

occasionally sparkles on the pages of this sober treatise. We should add that the copious indexes increase the value of this volume, by rendering its contents fully available.

LUNT'S ORIGIN OF THE LATE WAR.*-The author of this volume was an old Whig, who suffered himself to be drawn into the Democratic ranks, before the outbreak of the war, by his disgust at those political movements in Massachusetts, which destroyed the ascendency of "the ancient and honorable" Whig leaders, and sent Mr. Charles Sumner to the United States Senate, and Mr. Nathaniel P. Banks to the House of Representatives. He has never forgiven Massachusetts, nor the United States, for these soconsidered political mistakes, and the movements which occasioned them. Having himself committed a most unfortunate error, he may, perhaps, have never forgiven himself. At all events, he has given just such a theory concerning the origin of the late war, as might be expected from a person who holds the position described. It is very different in many respects from Mr. Buchanan's History of his own administration, and it introduces a great number of facts which Mr. Buchanan does not notice. A very large portion of the volume is occupied with a recital of the domestic politics of the Bay State, which is to be accounted for by the circumstance that the author finds in them matter for much bitter reflection, but which is excused by him by the consideration that the agitations which originated in Massachusetts had very much to do The most discreditable and unworthy with the origin of the war. passage in the volume which we have chanced to notice is the author's estimate of President Lincoln. That so able and cultivated a man as Mr. Lunt should have allowed himself to be so far misled by his prejudices, as to fail to appreciate Mr. Lincoln's true greatness, excites in us far more pity for the critic, than for the person whom the critic fails to honor.

LEONARD SCOTT'S REPRINTS OF THE BRITISH PERIODICALS.American readers of the English Reviews did not need the experience of the last six years to teach them what estimate to put on the Articles in which American affairs were discussed. Still, notwithstanding the lessons which we had had, there was some natu

*The Origin of the late War: traced from the beginning of the Constitution to the revolt of the Southern States. By GEORGE LUNT. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1866. 12mo. pp. 491.

ral indignation, on the first breaking out of the slaveholders' rebellion, at the flippant tone which they adopted, and the unfriendly and disingenuous spirit which they hastened to manifest. But we soon learned what to expect; and paid very little attention either to their criticisms, or oracular prophecies; except when some writer more than usually spiteful awakened a hearty laugh. We believed that Right and Justice would succeed; and no more allowed the sneers of English sympathizers with rebellion to diminish the affection with which we had always regarded England, than the outrageous abuse of Northern copperheads to affect our love for our own native land. And now that a change is perceptible in the tone of some of the magazines which so short a time ago heaped abuse upon us, we do not flatter ourselves that the animus of the writers is changed one whit, but are thankful that we can enjoy our laugh even more to our own satisfaction than before.

As a rather amusing, and perhaps exaggerated example of the change to which we refer, we place upon our pages two extracts from the lucubrations of that witty contributor to Blackwood's Magazine, Cornelius O'Dowd." The first is taken from the Number for January, 1865;—a few weeks before the collapse of the rebellion:

"Another cause also contributed not a little to the continuance of this struggle the immense notoriety it has attracted throughout the world to America and the Americans. These people, for the first time in their lives, found themselves an object of European interest. Up to this they had been little known as a people at this side of the Atlantic. A rare ingenuity in mechanical invention, and a very curious taste in drinks, had certainly been associated with their name; but beyond gun-stocks and gin-juleps, sherry-cobblers and Indiarubber boots, they had not been supposed to have conferred much on humanity. To become suddenly famous as a great military nation was then an immense bribe to national vanity. Hitherto it was their boast to consume more paté de foie gras, more champagne, and more Parisian finery, than any other people; but what if they could rival France in glory as well as gluttony.

*

'Now, I am much disposed to believe that these people would have made peace long ago if we had not given them so much of our attention and our interest. If, instead of sending out our own graphic correspondent to describe, and our artist to draw them, we had treated the whole as a vulgar, common. place row, from which there was no one useful lesson to be learned, moral or military; had we ignored them in our journals, and forgotten them in our leaders-had the public speakers of our platforms omitted all their dreary lamentations over 'fratricidal conflict' and 'decimating war,' my conviction is, the combatants would have been chewing the cud of peace together two years since.

"You made a ring for them, and what could they do but fight? You backed this one against that, and they went in with a will, only too proud to attract so respectable an audience, and be a matter of notoriety to such a well-dressed company. Had you really been sincere, you would have turned your backs on the performance. Had you felt half the horror you pretend, you would have gone home and declared the sight too disgusting to look on.

"You cannot make marshals of France out of drab-coated Philadelphians or pedantic Bostonians, no more than you can make the very names of their battlefields ring in verse.

"Think of Rancocus, Little Lick, Spottsylvania, and Funksville, and ask a Yankee laureate to commemorate them. What are poets to do with Murfreesborough, and Bull's Run, and Orange Court House, redolent as they are of 'liquoring up' and the tobacco quid ?”

The second will be found in the Number for March, 1866:

“America dares to hold language to France that all Europe combined dare not utter. There's no denying it; there's no qualifying it. If we had a Continental coalition to morrow, we could not venture to say what America has just said. What Minister, of Russia, or England, or Austria would say to the French Emperor, 'We were thinking of something else when you slipped into Savoy and Nice the other day; now that our hands are free, you'll have to go back again.' We are famous for brave words in our Foreign Office, but does any one expect that such a message as this will ever issue from Whitehall?

"We would no more provoke the Tuileries by an insolent dispatch, than we would go into one of Van Amburgh's cages and kick the lion. It has become a sort of European superstition that France can beat every one, and I am downright grateful to the Americans that they don't believe it.

"I never knew I liked America so well till I began to speculate on this war. I never suspected that there really was that tie of kindred which journalists disparage by that false adulation they deal in. I hate all the cant of 'cousinship,' but call them our own bone and blood; speak of them as people who have the same leading traits as ourselves-steady, determined, untiring, unyieldingtaking their share of hard knocks to-day with a fixed resolve to pay them to. morrow; in a word, of that stuff that makes right trusty friends and very terrible enemies. Regard them in this light, and say, if a war should break out between them and France, what side would you like to back. I say, America. I'd lay my head on the issue."

But a new interest will be awakened this year in the British periodicals, in consequence of the discussions which they contain of the important questions respecting Reform which are now agitating all England. The leaders of the Reform party-some of them-manifested such warm interest in our cause, and proved themselves such valuable friends in the day of our adversities, that we cannot fail to follow them with our sympathies and good wishes in the struggle in which they are now involved.