application. Other pieces show her sympathies to be with moderate thinkers, political and theological. The conservative and the liberal are to her equally serviceable in the body politic, as the centripetal and the centrifugal forces. To a young lady who expresses a wish to join the Established Church, while decidedly encouraging her purpose, Miss May hints that the state of the heart is of far more importance than the section of the Christian community to which one belongs; in the same poem however remarking—

"The terms of church-membership no one need lose,

others) show an imperfect mastery over the art—

The terms that signify duration seem a limited idea to convey. In many passages they cannot mean what we with superficial glance might deem their obvious import, or they would betray, in those who used them, error :as instance take, the promised glorious and perpetual state of the first Temple; now a name alone in history and dim tradition known. Idiom and figure, poetry refined, confound not with the truths therein enshrined."

The doctrine of the essay we will not discuss. Miss May's ing, and she has both mind and pieces are generally worth readwill to grapple with high themes. The tone of sentiment is uniformly healthy, and in fitting

and Reviews,'

As witness the last Privy Council deci

sion,

Which implies that the Articles want a revision.

But that is a question for clergy alone; The layman's opinions are clearly his

own,

And the broad and the narrow, the high and the low

In the same bond of fellowship onward may go."

On the question of Future Punishment our author, like all deep thinkers of our time, is fain to face the mystery; and like many, she rejects the popular doctrine, insisting chiefly on the remedial intention of all punishment. The critical question she treats in manner following. Not out of disrespect, but to show that in such style of argument there is a greater fitness in prose than in verse, we print the lines as a continuous paragraph. The attentive reader will observe that the passage is in rhyme: though such cadences as mean and dream (and we might add, from other parts of the volume, divine and climb, home and alone, with many

religious.

Idyls and Legends of Inverburn. By ROBERT BUCHANAN, Author of "Undertones." London: Strahan. 1865.

There is much fresh music in Mr. Buchanan's poems. His descriptive powers are good, and he has great power of realizing very various moods of thought and feeling. We like him best when his theme is one of simple pathos; and he succeeds better, we think, in blank verse than in rhyme. The irregular measures of the ode scarcely suit his genius, which betrays a luxuriance needing the calm restraint of the more regular and difficult forms of verse. The first poem, "Willie Baird," tells very touchingly as from the lips of an old schoolmaster, the story of a child lost in the snow. Other tales there are of tender emotions and of human suffering, but our favourite of all is "Poet Andrew." A rustic father touchingly describes the dawning of

genius in his child as something to be wondered at, and feared, in the simple household. For Andrew was to be "a minister," and the parents were quietly laying by their spare pennies to send him to the university of "Edinglass." A "poet" in that village circle represented, not the fair ideal which makes us love the word, but lawlessness, improvidence, and worse

"The beauteous dream

Of the good preacher in his braw black dress,

With house and income snug, began to fade

Before the picture of a drunken loon Bawling out songs beneath the moon and

stars;

Of poet Willie Clay, who wrote a book About King Robert Bruce, and aye got fu',

And scattered stars in verse, and aye got fu',

Wept the world's sins, and then got fu' again.

Of Ferguson, the feckless limb o' law,And Robin Burns, who guaged the whiskey casks

And brake the seventh commandment." But Andrew heeded no warning drawn from fears like these. His gift must struggle into expression. The picture of the father buying by stealth the country papers in which his son's first printed rhymes appeared, reading them "like a thief," and unconsciously storing them up in sad rememberance, is very touching. What follows is the old story. The lad goes to college: every vacation finds him more developed in thought, knowledge, fancy, and therefore more self-contained among the old home associations, more reserved, contemplative, while between himself and his parents the gulf yawned wider. At last they hear that he has suddenly gone to London, with a "grand poem." Bright and

New Testament from the Text of Tischendorf. Interleaved for Notes. London: ELLIOT STOCK, 62, Paternoster-row.

The utility of a well-bound clearly printed Greek Testament, interleaved with narrow-ruled writing paper, with plenty of blank pages at the end, and well and strongly bound, will be very obvious to all students. The text of this edition has a great independent value, as presenting the latest results of the learned editor's investigations. Professor Tischendorf's seventh critical edition appeared, as is wellknown, in 1859. The date of the present text is 1862, and we

presume that it will be identical with the text of the eighth critical edition, the publication of which has now commenced. The variations from Dr. Tischendorf's former conclusions are not very great, and are chiefly due to the influence of the Sinaitic MS. "singulari Dei beneficio his temporibus reservatum at que donatum." We have marked one passage in which the learned editor differs from his own earlier editions, as well as from the Sinaitic codex, returning to the received text. His reason we should be very glad to know. The passage in Rev. xxii. 14, where Tischendorf restores "who

do his commandments "in place of the reading in which as we thought, most critics were now finally agreed, "who wash (or have washed) their robes." (TOLOÙVTES τας εντολας for πλύνοντες [.αντες ] τάς στολάς.)

The volume contains brief but interesting Prolegomena, and an apparatus cirlicus, while the differences between the received text and that of the editor are noted in the margin. In elegance as in convenience the book is unrivalled by anything of the kind that we have seen.

Handbook of English Literature. By J. ANGUS, D.D. Rel. Tract Society.

A broad general view, either of history or of literature, is of little value for its own sake; as leading to the fullest and minutest study of events and authors, it is of great value. The mere recollection of the succession of events and their dates is not the knowledge of history, but it gives great facility in the further study of history, and to have got by heart

the names of English authors, the titles of their works, and an idea or two of what they wrote about, -this is not to know English literature, but it is an important preparatory step towards such knowledge. The necessity for the thorough and careful study of particular periods of our literature and of individual authors increase the value of a trustworthy guide, who will take the student intelligently but rapidly over the whole region. Such aid is afforded with great efficiency by the volume before us. Here and there the impression is given that a degree of condensation has been aimed at, impossible to attain, except at some sacrifice of utility. A string of names of writers on a particular subject, without a word of information as to any peculiar character in their works or special service rendered, can be of no use to any one.

The amount of careful industry displayed in the compilation is marvellous, and the wise and thoroughly Christian remarks on writings that have a moral and religious learning, are such as were to be expected from Dr. Angus.

The arrangement adopted is that of grouping the authors according to their literary denominations, as Poets, Dramatists, Historians, Theologians, &c. A tabular arrangement of them in periods is also supplied for the reader's study of the literature according to that method.

Essays on Woman's Work. By BESSIE R. PARKES. Strahan & Co.

A thoughtful, clear, well-written treatment of the chief topics affecting the social condition of the

woman of our day and country. The following estimate of the position and value of woman in modern society will prepare the reader for something sensible and worth attention on every subject the volume subsequently deals with "I do not believe in the accuracy of the observations of any woman who says that English women are at this moment inferior to English men in general sense and intelligence, and ought not to remain so; any more than I believe in the accuracy of the observations of any man who comes to a similar opinion, with this difference, that he thinks they ought so to remain. I believe that in both cases the false judgment arises from an enormouз overrating of acquired education, as compared to general intellectual and moral power.

Men get more school knowledge, and, of course, they get more professional training; and if I wanted a technical judgment of any kind, of course, I should apply to a man, but if I wanted a good honest judgment on a question of conduct, I should go to a good man or woman indifferently; and if it were a matter requiring wholesome knowledge of the world, I would as soon go to an old woman as to an old man, and should expect to get as sensible an opinion. It appears to me that men and women are both apt to be warped in their minds, but from opposite causes; and I do not think the chances of a false bias greater in the one than in the other. Taken together, they make up the mass of sinning, suffering, striving humanity; and if I wish to work especially for woman, it is because I am a woman myself, and so able to appreciate their particular troubles."

The aim of the book is to show that there is a right kind and degree of independence for women which they have not claimed as they might; and to point out the opportunities of such independence open to them in the pursuit of business, literature and art.

With regard to the last of these pursuits, why do not women claim it as their own region equally with men? We see nothing offensive to the most refined ideas of what a woman's life should be in the fact of her being an artist. Much that is considered characteristic of the mind and heart of woman is favourable to high attainment in Art, and it would certainly greatly help to deliver us from what is coarse and vulgar if female sculptors and painters

were more numerous.

The Righteousness of God, as Taught by St. Paul in his Epistle to the Romans. With Appendices on Human Ignoance of Divine Things; on Future Retribution; on the Doctrine of Election; and on a promised Restoration. By the author of "The Destiny of the Human Race." London : Simpkin, Marshall, & Co. 1865.

The author of this little volume still pursues his indefatigable course, as one who feels himself to be in possession of neglected, forgotten, or unrecognised truth. We differ from his main conclusions, and yet we thankfully acknowledge that the ardour and integrity with which he pursues the investigation of the Scriptures, cannot be thrown away. It is something even for the most orthodox to be compelled to reexamine the grounds of their

orthodoxy, even though the result be their confirmation in the old belief. Of the work before us, the appendices occupy the larger part; and these are, for the most part, occupied by a succinet re-statement and defence of the doctrines concerning the destiny of man, which the author's previous volumes have rendered familiar. The differentia of the book is in the exposition it gives of "the righteousness of God without the law," which is manifested in the Gospel," as signifying not "God's method of justification," nor even abstract righteousness as an attribute of the Most High, but simply fairness, or equity in the treatment of all his creatures-the Gentile being placed on the same footing with the Jew, and by parity of reasoning, the heathen with the Christian. The righteousness is thus in the application of the great Atonement: its intrinsic righteousness, or rightness, by which it approves itself to the Divine mind, our author holds we cannot understand, inasmuch as the secrets of that Mind are above us. Our theories of the Atonement, therefore, with their elaborate reconciliations of "justice" and "mercy," must go for nothing. In support of this view the author gives a well-written appendix "on human ignorance of Divine things." To a great extent we concur with his views on this point, although we must say in the first place that the doctrine of man's ignorance seems in our day in some danger of being exaggerated, in the reaction against those neatly arranged systems of universal truth, in which every thought of the Divine Mind was squared

and fashioned into fitness with the conception of men. No doubt, our ignorance is a thing to be heed fully remembered, but even ignorance has its limit. We were made to know something of the spiritual universe, whether much or little; and we confess that we should give a larger scope than our author has ventured to do, to the challenge virtually so often repeated in Scripture, "Shall not the Judge of all the earth DO RIGHT." So that, secondly, we cannot allow his exposition to exhaust the fullness of the text. True, we know not all the reasons which, in the eye of God, and in the judgment of eternity, make plain the accordance of Christ's atoning work with the perfect law of righteousness, but some of these reasons, we reverently say, we even now discern, and they indicate the direction in which yet higher proofs of the same thing will be sought and found. Else, how could we trust so as to be saved? That in which we repose our faith must have approved itself to our moral nature; and in this sense, at least, it may be said "the righteousness of God is made manifest." But we do not mean here to discuss the whole subject. Our author in every page sets his readers' thoughts to work, and asks for assent only in proportion as he can sustain his views by the honest and enlightened interpretation of Scripture.