ings, and especially consolatory to the Christian heart. It is well to have them within easy reach as helps to a spiritual tendency of the mind. The reading of devotional poetry is an excellent means of pious culture. In these times of disturbance and distress, heavenly visions become unusually dear to faith and hope. Many of these poems were inspired by just such sore trials as we are now suffering, and they are, next to the Bible itself, the very aids which we need to keep our courage true to our Redeemer, even to the end. There is rest in heaven, if this world is a stormy ocean. We recognize not a few familiar pieces, and find some curiosities, as the full version of Dickson's "O Mother dear, Jerusalem," in sixty-two four-lined stanzas. The work is executed with much taste. Out of its numerous pleasing effusions, we give a single sonnet by Henry Alford, entitled "Our Early Friends."

"One and another, pass they and are gone,

Our early friends. Like minute-bells of heaven,
Across our path in fitful wailings driven,
Hear we death's tidings ever and anon.
A little longer, and we stand alone;

A few more strokes of the Almighty's rod,
And the dread presence of the voice of God
About our footsteps shall be heard and known.
Toil on, toil on, thou weary, weary arm;
Hope ever onward, heavy-laden heart;
Let the false charmer ne'er so wisely charm;
Listen we not, but ply our task apart,

Cheering each hour of work with thoughts of rest,.
And with their love who labored and are blest."

How to be Saved. Three Letters to a Friend. By FRANCIS WAYLAND. Boston: American Tract Society. 1862,

Books are not valuable according to their size. Books on a subject like this ought to be small, elementary, divested of every superfluous thought and word. This treatise is divided into three sections: "What the Holy Spirit does for the Sinner." "What the Sinner must do for himself." "What are the Evidences of Conversion." The answers to these inquiries are practical and scriptural. But those which dispose of the first two topics might be yet more simplified, by just saying that what the Holy Spirit does for the sinner is - to create within him a new heart and a right spirit; and that what the sinner must do for himself is

VOL. III.NO. XIV.

not to do anything which shall hinder God's

18

Spirit from working in him repentance, faith, love, obedience. Dr. Spencer says that when some one asked a young, rejoicing Christian, long struggling with conviction, what she did to obtain mercy, her answer was, "I stopped doing, and let God do what he wanted to for me." The experienced views and the earnest expostulations of this little book are fitted to do much good to the serious reader, in inducing an immediate and hearty submission to Christ, and in testing, by a few radical evidences, the genuineness of that submission.

Broadcast. By NEHEMIAH ADAMS, D. D. 12mo. pp. 210. Boston Ticknor & Fields. 1863.

A BOOK of sententious wisdom, pure sentiment, suggestive thought. The author has special qualifications for this delicate work. His gems are genuine, and the facets are skilfully cut. Take these:

"Wherefore askest thou after my name, seeing it is secret?' Consider the value and beauty of privacy in religion, as regards some experiences which never can be mentioned without both breaking a certain charm in them to ourselves, and incurring the suspicion of fanaticism, or at least, presumption."

666

And a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith.' We must not despair of conversions among the ecclesiastics of erroneous systems."

"Hearing one complain that he did not know that God had elected him, the question was put to him, 'Have you "elected" God?""

Most of these paragraphs evolve themselves from Scripture expressions. We think that the first reading of them will not generally exhaust their full meaning. They should be pondered carefully, in the precise sense of that word, when they will be found to contain very weighty and impressive significance. For stimulating the mind to the conception of sermons, this book is worth more to a preacher than volumes of printed skeletons.

The Institutes of Medicine. By MARTYN PAINE, A. M., M. D., LL. D., Professor of the Institutes of Medicine and Materia Medica in the University of the City of New York, &c., &c., &c. Seventh edition. 8vo. pp. 1130. New York: Harper & Brothers. London: Sampson Low, Son & Co. 1862.

SEVEN editions of a massive work like this, in fifteen years, are a sufficient voucher for its high estimation among the medical faculty,

from the members of which it must have received its main patronage. Its author is a champion of the theory of the vitalists and the solidists in medicine, as differing from the more recent chemical and excitosecretory school of practitioners. We confess a liking to conservative views in medicine as well as theology; and although not competent to maintain an argument upon the issues involved in these differences of the doctors, we can see that this stately volume is from the hand of a master of his profession. Its strong points are a broad and thorough treatment of the whole science of physiology, pathology, and therapeutics; a sturdy conviction of the soundness of its positions; a clear understanding of the opposing theories; and a vigorous, classic, concise, and unflinching style of writing. He seems to have gone through the intricate questions involved in his treatise with an independent and well-adjusted mind, which has stored itself with the rich spoils of patient and varied study in his chosen field of knowledge. Possibly, a consciousness of coming to the rescue of his specific views, as a medical man, from the popular spread of later opposing doctrines, may have given his advocacy of the older system a somewhat overstrained look; but this may constitute one of its valuable qualities, as an authority in the profession has put the point: "In an age when humoralism and organic chemistry are threatening to displace all other views of physiological and pathological action, this work, because it is ultra in its vitalism and solidism, must exert a most salutary influence upon the history of the present and the rising generation." We note that the author guards against the too frequent habit of "excessive medication," and, in a labored supplementary dissertation, contends with great cogency and a truly Christian spirit for the distinct existence and immortality of the human soul, against the materialists and all who, confounding reason with instinct, push us downward towards annihilation. We are gratified that so erudite a savant is not reluctant to recognize the authority of the Scriptures in these high spheres of knowledge. His learned labors confer dignity upon the profession of which he is at once a pillar and an ornament.

With additional

The Book-Hunter, etc. By JOHN HILL BURTon.
Notes by RICHARD GRANT WHITE. Crown 8vo. pp. 423. New
York: Sheldon & Co. 1863. Boston Crosby & Nichols.

A VOLUME of piquant anecdote, juicy humor, and much useful as well as entertaining knowledge. We like it; and despite its own dictum, have made the margin of our copy "sedgy" with notes and queries the paper takes ink beautifully. We commend it to the

clerical brotherhood as a capital alterative for their weightier professional reading. Here, by the way, is one of its oddities where the author advises that the deleterious mental effects of too much of Gibbon's Decline and Fall, and similar elaborate works, be obviated by alternated courses of such books as "Boston's Fourfold State, or Hervey's Meditations, or Sturm's Reflections for Every Day in the Year, or Don Juan, or Ward's History of Stoke-upon-Trent." This singular string of literature reminds us of the call of an after-dinner toast-master upon the music "to strike up something lively-Yankee Doodle, or Old Hundred, or anything of that sort." A good deal of that sort burrows between these covers.

The book will nourish a wholesome antiquarianism among our scholarly men, in large classes of whom this is much needed. It will help to the more intelligent and rewarding purchase of books, and foster the library-collecting spirit, while it furnishes the best correctives of morbid excesses in that direction. Its talk about bookstores and particularly book-auctions, is full of interest. The story anent "McEwen on Types" would cure a fit of severe indigestion; but we shall not tell it here. The information about Club-Literature is fresh and valuable. The author is a thorough bibliophile, and knows how to bring down his game. He throws some excellent criticism into his very digressive disquisitions, and makes his bibliomanias as attractive as a romance. It is among these lighter species of the book-making craft that we class ita toothsome dessert after some more substantial bill of fare.

The American annotator has caught the spirit of his text, and ranges about quite as loosely and briskly as his file-leader. Some of these notes are decided curiosities, as that in which he adds certain pithy contemporary war-orders to the list above-given of intellectual digesters. Both author and editor, in fact, have evidently intended to take the bit in their teeth over a very free course. The result is a volume which will doubtless itself have a run, and very possibly impart an impetus to some other heavier literary wares.

ARTICLE X.

THE ROUND TABLE.

Books. What sapient king was it who ordered his librarian to put all his volumes on the shelves with their backs inward, because, forsooth, his majesty would not permit even a book to turn its back on him? A wiser man was an old companion of ours now a great celebrity who used to lie for hours looking, in silent reverie, at the goodly rows of his chosen friends in their cheerful coats of sheep, and calf, and muslin, drinking inspiration from a sort of slumbrous yet not sleepy musing on what was within those pleasant tomes, and how it came there. We confess to something of the same thing; for often, when stretched upon our study-lounge for a summer nap, the shining gold-leaf lettering of a row of the dii majores or minores has caught our eye, and instead of a trip in the first train of balloons to the land of dreams, we have found ourself careering in a most wideawake mood to, it would be hard to say where

among the haunts of the muses and the genii—whence have come the beautiful and the wise fancies and thoughts of three thousand years. Next to the inside of books, their backs are stimulating and precious, even if in cheapest boards. Yet, we admire also the binder's art, with something of a John-Foster weakness.

In that alcove stand side by side, in loving propinquity, a thousand of the choicest of these "embalmed souls," like the armory of David's tower, "whereon there hang a thousand bucklers, all shields of mighty men." But our weaponry is worth more than his, for, despite the spirit of the times, the pen is greater than the sword. Some of these pens are, indeed, but very soft ones from the eaglet's wing, and others are of the strong pinions which sail right upward towards the sun. But how shall the eaglet's wing become the eagle's, except by use? "Almost an impertinence for a young man to publish a book or for a young woman either? The kindly author of "Veal" did not say that, with all his quiet fun over this, and other sorts of immaturity. Nevertheless, beef is more toothsome and nutritious than cutlets.

This extinguisher of youthful aspirations (we have noticed his volumes in a former number) has another "Intuition" which is a truth or a heresy according to circumstances: - "usually an error in an old man to have published two." If the authors of "Festus" and "Uncle