nouncement of his deposition. For this well-played farce the Jesuit Maimbourg does not hesitate to enrol him among the noblest martyrs of the church, and for his self-sacrificing spirit place him in merit by the side of St. Peter himself. How much he deserves such eulogy, the hypocrisy, simony, and corruptions of his life, might enable any one unversed in Jesuit casuistry to judge. He merely cried "quarter" when the knife was at his throat. The threat of the council, that further obstinacy should be met with severer penalties, was hung in terrorem over his head. The report of his submission reached the council on the first day of June, and in considerate appreciation of his ostentatious humility, the holy fathers determined on placing him in closer and safer custody. On the third day of June, therefore, he was removed by their order from Ratolfcell to Gottlieben, occupying a cell in the same prison where Huss was confined. It is doubtful whether the two men met. It is enough that they now found themselves in this strange juxtaposition. The last time they had stood face to face, the proud, tyrannical, and hypocritical pontiff had seemed to occupy a position superior to any earthly tribunal. Soon his selfish policy marked Huss as a scapegoat for his own sin. Denied the luxury of exulting over his victim, he spread his complaint of the emperor over Europe, and howled forth his rage that the policy rather than the justice of Sigismund had snatched the victim from his tiger claws. Now the tiger himself was caged, and Huss might, if he had chosen, have enjoyed the disgrace of his foe. His own turn for exultation had come. But he chose rather to see in this event the demonstration of the futility of his own excommunication - a demonstration which was not to lose its effect upon the Bohemian nation.

"Moralists might discover an important lesson in the contrast presented by these two men confined in the same fortress. One was the coward tyrant of Christendom, taking counsel of his fears, and adopting in regard to himself language, if true, as degrading as it was submissive. The other, weak and exposed as he was to the inveterate malice of his foes, had no terms to offer but those of submission to the supremacy of truth alonea supremacy which his foes also must finally acknowledge. One had alienated all the friends he ever had. The other had not only bound his former friends closer to him by his steadfast integrity, but had won the hearts of his jailers to sympathy, compassion, and admiration. There, in one cell, might be seen the ex-pontiff, on whose head rested a weight of crime that could scarce have found its parallel in the lives of the Herods and the Neros-crushed by infamy as well as by chains- -a whining supplicant, cringing to lick the hand that inflicted his blows-stripped of all his honors, and his name made the by-word of reproach. Here, in another, was the victim of bigoted and jealous malice, and yet, with an integrity and purity of character on which his bitterest enemies could not fix a stain, awaiting in the calm consciousness of his innocence the assaults of calumny-sustained by strength and grace imparted from aboveturning his prison-cell into a Bethel, and with faith in God exultant in every prospect, whether of acquittal or of death. One of these prisoners humbles himself before men; the other before God only. One represents

Barabbas, the other, in his patient endurance of injustice, calumny, and scorn, reminds us of the example of his divine Master.

66

The ex-pontiff had few if any to commiserate his fate. The name of Huss will be respected and honored while truth has honors for her martyrs."-Vol. I., 535–537.

"Lessons from Insect Life, with numerous Illustrations," "Harry, the Boy that did not own himself," "Down in a Mine," "The Circus, a Story for Boys," "Plants, illustrating in their Structure the Wisdom and Goodness of God," "An Index to the Bible, and Counsels for Prayer."" The Temperance Tales, by LUCIUS M. SARGENT. A new Edition." American Tract Society, 28 Cornhill, Boston.

PROFITABLE reading for our little folks.

These issues of the Tract

Society are doing good service, and will do still more, as they crowd out the vast quantities of fiction and trash that are ruining so many young minds.

We are specially glad to see this new Edition of the Temperance Tales. They have been very serviceable in a good cause. We remember with a lively satisfaction our reading of them twenty years ago, and rejoice in their reappearance as old friends and co-laborers. We esteem them worth more than the most of our modern temperance lecturers, setting a volume to a man.

Colonial Schemes of Popham and Gorges. Speech of JOHN WINGATE THORNTON, Esq., at the Fort Popham Celebration, Aug. 29th, 1862, under the auspices of the Maine Historical Society.

We have read this Speech with great interest, and the Notes, which are more than double the text, with even greater interest. Mr. Thornton evidently appreciated this more than bi-centennial and met the occasion with a preparation pertinent to it. We the more willingly say this, having attended a semi-centennial, a centennial and a bi-centennial, to which the chief speakers brought little preparation or pertinent address. So those anniversaries as such were failures, and those occasions stand adjourned for fifty, one hundred and two hundred years. The address of Mr. Thornton is replete with history belonging to the locality and the times of those early but fruitless adventures in Maine. A keen historical criticism runs through the Notes, exceedingly rich, spoiling some fashionable theories about the Puritans, and suggesting revised editions of some Histories, and not sparing even the Maine Historical Society itself, for its official compliment, on the Fort Popham monument, to Popham for doing what he never did or tried to do.

The American Annual Cyclopædia and Register of Important Events of the Years 1861, 1862. pp. 780, 830. New York: D. Appleton & Company.

WE have noticed already, somewhat at length, Appleton's "New American Cyclopædia," of which these handsome volumes are a continuance. We have a steadily increasing conviction of the great value of that work, and especially of its adaptation to the wants of American scholars. No other is comparable to it in this respect.

These annual volumes, which are to be continued, are a new feature in a work of this kind, the importance of which will be at once perceived. The "Encyclopædia Brittanica" appears in a new edition once in ten years, more or less; and the result of each new edition is that the edition immediately preceding falls at once greatly in value, as each previous edition has done, and the owners of such editions find themselves behindhand in some of the most important matters embraced in such a work, as geographical and scientific discovery, history and biography. This annual issue of the American Cyclopædia embraces all such matters, and so leaves the value of the previous volumes undiminished. These supplementary volumes embrace "political, civil, military, and social affairs; public documents; biography, statistics, commerce, finance, literature, science, agriculture, and mechanical industry."

Much space is necessarily devoted, for the present, to matters connected with our great civil war, and to supplying some inevitable deficiencies of the original work. When the war is ended and such deficiencies are supplied, it is likely that a new volume once in two or three years will be found sufficient.

All the volumes, in varied and elegant styles of binding, are found at 89 Milk street, with Mr. C. A. Asp, sole agent for Massachusetts and New England.

Sermons preached before His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, during his Tour in the East, in the Spring of 1862. With Notices of some of the Localities visited. By ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, D.D. Crown 8vo. pp. 272. New York: Charles Scribner. 1863.

THIS is a unique book. The eminent Oxford professor, and chaplain both to the Queen and the Prince of Wales, here gives us, at the request of the latter, a beautiful and most appropriate memorial of their tour in Palestine, a year ago. It contains fourteen sermons, all save one of which were prepared and preached as they travelled, the themes of which were suggested by the localities where they were uttered to the little company which formed the Prince's party. The

author intimates that the circumstances of their delivery must explain the lack of a more finished dress. We like them the more for the comparative negligence of their attire. But, in no circumstances could Dr. Stanley fail to put his thoughts into a beautiful and effective costume. The sermons are rich in truth and noble impulse. Those Sabbaths must have been impressive in those lands of sacred memories. The notes of travel are fresh and instructive, and are illustrated with numerous engravings. The volume, in its mechanical style, is a gem of artistic elegance.

The Blood of Jesus. Boston: American Tract Society, 28 Cornhill.

"THE Blood of Jesus" is a Christian classic, a gem on the central doctrine of Christianity, and should be a hand-book for every Christian closet. A little more careful statement of some points, or rather relations, of doctrine, would have prevented some liabilities of misconception.

Happiness: Discourses delivered at Geneva, by COUNT AGENOR DE GASPARIN. Translated by Mary L. Booth. With an Introduction by Rev. E. N. Kirk, D.D. Boston: American Tract Society, 28 Cornhill. 1863.

A BRILLIANT intellect and a warm piety have put into these pages a most beautiful exposition of the value of that happiness which flows from a thorough sympathy of the human soul with the Divine through the reconciling grace of Christ. Would that it were the universal possession of all the children of men.

Evidences of Christianity. Lectures before the Lowell Institute, January, 1844. Revised as a text-book, by MARK HOPKINS, D.D. Boston: T. R. Marvin & Son, 42 Congress street. New York: Sheldon & Co.

THESE Lectures, published seventeen years ago, are now revised, the arguments arranged more distinctly, and captions given to the separate thoughts. The work is now admirably adapted to colleges and schools. But it is none the less adapted to meet the wants of ministers and the better class of readers generally, and it is to such that we specially commend it.

The scepticism of the times calls for a more constant study of the solid and convincing proofs of Divine Revelation, and the connection which the miracles bear to the doctrines and morality of the religious system. Dr. Hopkins says in the preface: "When I entered upon this subject I supposed it had been exhausted; but on looking at it more nearly, I was led to see that Christianity has such relations to

nature and to man, that the evidence resulting from a comparison of it with them may be almost said to be exhaustless." Would not many a minister find a similar experience? What is said in the opening chapter about "responsibility of men for their opinions," and "when truth has a fair chance," is worth the price of the book to any man.

The mechanical part of the volume is in severely good taste, and highly commends the volume to the class of readers for whom it is designed. We wish all books could show such type and page.

ARTICLE IX.

THE ROUND TABLE.

PRE-EXISTENCE ARGUED FROM A NEW BASIS. It is quite evident that some of our race are very ancient, and must have had something to do with Lucifer in a previous world. The volume issued some years since to prove this has attracted no attention, though a notice of it has been often and painfully solicited. We attribute the neglect of the theory and volume to a want of data and facts to sustain the argument. The highly practical nature and bearings of the theory have led us to examine the whole subject of preexistence and to construct a new argument for it, having a basis of undoubted facts and personal testimony. We give the heads of the argument, and shall spread it out in full on our pages if the interest in the subject should call for it.

1. Our race is connected with the antediluvians. Some, as Sawyer, the German neologists and French naturalists, say that the human race sprung from different pairs, and so obscure the line of our pedigree back to antemundane times. But the October Harper introduces a living witness who says that one of his ancestors, ever so far back, owned the grove of Gopher-wood where Noah cut the timber for the ark. Noah says he sprung from Adam, and so we gain one step toward our preëxistence, and from the best of evidence - a living witness and the Bible.

2. Sir Charles Lyell and others, savans among bones, are sure they have found some pre-Adamite human skeleton- or at any rate some very old bones. So we get beyond Adam toward the angels in