effete conventionalism, putting the mind into much the same cramps as encase and dwarf their children's feet. In short, we seem to reach here the perfection of elaborated puerility-a stupendous system of most painstaking frivolity. Were is not for their territorial and numerical bigness, these Chinese surely never could have commanded much attention or gained much importance among the nations. We honestly doubt if fewer desirable traits of character can be found in any of the semi-civilized populations of the earth. All this, however, makes them a study of great interest as a peculiar sample of humanity. Mr. Doolittle furnishes most ample material for such study. His volumes are a museum of specimens from almost every section of this curious social and national formation. He deals in facts as exclusively as Mr. Gradgrind. For theorizing and generalizing he has no taste. He never puts his dissected atlas together. Here are the pieces; any one who chooses may fit them into a whole. He has no philosophy of this peculiarly conditioned subject; but he can tell what he has seen in a very distinct way. This is his chosen field, and we do not find fault with him for confining himself so strictly to it. No one has wrought so carefully over it, and the harvest is plenteous.

It is a strong recommendation of his sketches to our confidence, that numerous intelligent readers of them, on their first publication at Hong Kong, advised their republication in a more permanent form, while this mode of their production has fixed upon them some literary infelicity in the way of repetition and looseness of construction, that might have been avoided, had the volumes been written as a more continuous and severe study. But this might have made them less various and circumstantial; and on the whole they probably are a better expression of their author's information and literary workmanship in this form than in any other. We have a friend who never can bear to put pen for any authorial effort, to a clear full sheet of paper, it stiffens up so coldly the flow of his thought, but give him an unlimited pile of old circulars and letters, and his genius disports upon their backs with refreshing exuberance. In some such way, we fancy, these comely volumes are due to their newspaporial conception, but for which they would not have been born. We take them, therefore, gratefully, as they are, and value them as the best work, on the whole, within popular reach, upon the peculiarities of the most populous nation of our little globe. The illustrations are of the well known excellence of Harper's wood engraving.

13.-History of the Peace. Being a History of England from 1681 to 1854. With an Introduction 1800 to 1815. By HARRIET MARVol. III. Boston: Walker, Fuller & Co. 1866.

TINEAU.

THIS Volume embraces a period of nine years, from 1826 to 1835. Perhaps no period of equal length in the entire annals of England, is of more varied, or more absorbing interest; for the statesmen who lived and acted a part; for great measures of political reform; for men of science, and art and brilliant and erratic genius, the fierce conflicts of rising and advancing democracy with toryism, tragic incidents, startling crimes, the popular recoil from the severe criminal legislation of the past, and the advancement of general society towards a point not yet reached of liberty and equality. Such names as Canning, and Liverpool, and Huskisson, and Sir Robert Peel, and O'Connell, and Brougham, and Wellington, and Grey, are enough to fill out a goodly historic period. And then we have glimpses at Luke Hansard, and Sir Thomas Lawrence, and Tierney, and Dugald Stewart, and Wm. Mitford, and Edward Irving and Wollaston and Sir Humphrey Davy, and Arnold of Rugby, with the ideas and interests which they represented.

Among the great measures carried in Parliament, were the repeal of the Test and Corporation Act, for the relief of Dissenters, the Catholic-relief Bill, and the great Parliamentary Reform Bill. It is interesting to note, through all the fierce agitations of that stormy and perilous period, the characteristic differences of statesmen: Canning combining the clear conception of some great principles with blinding prejudice in relation to others; Lord John Russell the sincere and earnest but prudent champion of constitutional liberty and popular reform; Sir Robert Peel intensely conservative in his sympathies, but of consummate sagacity and foresight, at once timid and bold, cautious in committing himself, but fearless and strong in a crisis, patriotic in his instincts, holding back as long as he could with safety, but yielding with infinite grace when it was impossible any longer to resist the popular pressure; on the whole a great and wise and useful statesman; Wellington always clearly defined and frank, and positive in his principles, and acting always as he honestly believed to be best on the whole, for the church and the State; Brougham brilliant and unstable; O'Connell elegant and witty and popular and dishonest.

That England made great progress during this period, in much needed political reforms, and philanthropy, and general social amelioration, all must admit. That every change which was introduced will be found ultimately to have been the dictate of the

highest wisdom, it is too early to assert. Miss Martineau sees some things through the medium of her own political and religious views, of course, but is an honest chronicler. The style is not the purest historic. For example the commencement of the 5th chapter: More dissensions in the cabinet !" We do not apprehend the necessity of parading Lord Eldon's profanity as on page 42.

This volume, like the previous two, is beautiful in paper and letter press. A fourth volume nearly ready, will complete this work. 14.-Poems. By EDNA DEAN PROCTOR. New York: Hurd & Houghton. Boston: E. P. Dutton & Co.

1866.

THIS elegant little volume contains sixty-nine pages of "National Poems," and seventy-nine of "Miscellaneous." Among the former are "The Stripes and Stars," "The Grave of Lincoln," "The Slave Sale," etc. These were written evidently when the pressure of the great conflict was on the heart of the nation, and are full of high toned patriotism, sounding out in stirring numbers. Among the miscellaneous poems are some of great beauty. Indeed we think there are very few that are not. We have marked "Heart-Deaths," "The Blue Bird," "Take Heart," and "The Priest and I." We should like "Trust" better, if the writer would tell us a little more clearly why she is "not afraid of dying." The absence of the distinct Christian sentiment when the writer seems close to it, is the defect of these really beautiful poems.

15.-Lucy Arlyn. By J. T. TROWBRIDGE. 12mo. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1866.

THE vigor of Mr. Trowbridge's style, the vivacity, and at times the beauty of his conceptions, are undeniable. He has a strong sense of the charms and the sublimities of nature, of which his descriptions of mountain and forest scenery, under the varying aspects of the day and the seasons, furnish good illustrations. He seizes the bold features of questionable and bad men and women with a firm grasp, and gives them a rough sort of charcoal sketching with much effect. Nor is he insensible to the finer shades of human nature, though we think him not specially happy in their delineation. In this story there is small room for the quiet movements of the purest goodness. It is a tale of excitements and adventures which must be worked out, if at all, by machinery of a much higher pressure than that.

It is not a wholesome story in its total impression. It shows up the folly of being foolish, and the wickedness of being wicked, plainly enough; but it is not very plain, after all, that the author re

pudiates the cause of the thick coming troubles of most of the people here brought together. He makes much sport of the absurdities of spiritualistic phenomena which are the marplot of his tale; but if we rightly understand page 519, he endorses the new religion thus announced and witnessed as being essentially true. He brings several of its prophets to sufficiently bad ends. Yet he seems to stand sponsor for the "mission" which even they had taken up in the name of humanity's salvation. He has some good sentiments about the need of individual regeneration in order to the reformation of society; but we do not see a very straight road to it laid down on this chart. In our judgment, about as good guides as he is likely to find to lead on this social renovation, are supplied by his Christina and Guy Bannington; and what they effected is not hopeful as a prophecy in this direction. The book is gusty, turbid, spasmodic, with considerably greater evidences of literary power than of fitness to conduct troubled, yearning souls, into the paths of peace. It satisfies our moral sense less than our artistic taste, in both of which lights we hold it to be open to grave exceptions. Its single volume contains three unsuccessful love affairs, one secret marriage, two seductions, several robberies, some swearing, two murders, three other violent deaths, and a variety of unclassified ras. calities, male and female, offset by a scant measure of either "the bold or the mild virtues." We confess our inability to discover the utility of this style of literary creation. True as it may be to the life of sin which misleads and pollutes society, is its picturing forth in this way likely to make society any better? Mr. Trowbridge has a rising reputation, specially as a Boston author. We feel a strong personal desire that he should give us something much superior to any of his productions thus far: we think he is capable of this.

16. A Commentary on the Book of Ecclesiastes. By the Rev. LOYAL YOUNG, D. D., Pastor of the Presbyterian church of Butler, Pa. With Introductory notices, by the Rev. A. T. MCGILL, D. D., Professor in Princeton Theological Seminary, and the Rev. M. W. JACOBUS, D. D., Professor in the Western Theological Seminary, Pa. Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication. 1866.

THIS is a new attempt to do a work admitted to be of very great difficulty. How great the difficulty is, appears from the fact that after all the learned labor which has been expended upon the Book of Ecclesiastes, men of profound scholarship and earnest religious spirit, still differ so widely as to its meaning. It is not even decided (among the doctors) who was its author. Dr. Young is very confi

dent that it was Solomon, and brings strong reasons to support the opinion. But Moses Stuart argued at much length in the Introduction to his critical and very learned Commentary, to establish the point that the book was written by a later writer. He was supported in this view by not a few great names, as Grotius, Eichhorn, Dr. Wette, Rosenmuller, Gesenius, Hengstenberg, etc.

Dr. Young supposes that Solomon had an editor, who prefixed the first and second verses, as a kind of title page, and the last seven as a conclusion. He regards the third verse, being the first as the book came from the hand of Solomon, as the text, and gives what he regards as the key to the book in the following sentence:

"Keeping in view that the Book of Ecclesiastes is a treatise on the question, what profit is there in this life if there is no other? and that this question is preparatory to the great doctrine of a future life and a future judgment, which Solomon eventually declares, we find the difficulties of the book cleared up. We find a freshness and beauty about it that is truly enchanting. The enigmas and riddles of the book are all solved, and the treatise stands out prominent an argument for a God, for immortality, for a future reward."

Whether we are able to agree entirely with Dr. Young or not, this central idea imparts a deep interest to his work. It is rich in scriptural thought and illustration, and will furnish valuable aid to the preacher, as well as to the private student of the Word of God.

The plan embraces first, an "Analysis of Ecclesiastes at one view," then "The Words of the Preacher," in paragraph form, and thirdly the Commentary. In this main portion of the book, Dr. Young gives, chapter by chapter, Contents, Analysis, Exposition, and Suggested Remarks. The suggested remarks are very discriminating and pertinent, and will be found of peculiar value to young preachers, if read, not for immediate pulpit preparation, as no such book should be, but for enlargement and elevation of the mind and heart. The volume is very beautifully got up, of clear, attractive page, making it most pleasant to read.

17.- Snow-Bound. A Winter Idyl. By JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1866.

We are so much delighted with this last of Whittier's things, that WE we distrust our fitness to write a notice of it. Yet we are confident that if we could expand our notice into an article, we could justify our high opinion of the poem. We had no sooner read it once, than we found it necessary to read it a second time; and have put it with "Evangeline" and "Enoch Arden," to be read again and again. Something of the charm we find in it may be due to the fact of our