The ancient Britons appear to have been under the influence of more education than is usually attributed to them. They were evidently conversant with the art of music and poetry, for we are told "there were bards, or teachers: these sang to their harps the praises of their patron's valour, and accompanied him and his warriors to the field." The Druids, even the enlightened Pliny admits, were profoundly skilled in magic and the language of the stars; and of the virtues of plants and herbs they were by no means ignorant. But the general state of literature could not have been at a very high climax; it was, for the most part, only familiar to the Druids, who imparted slight gleams of it to the chieftain's sons, among whom the lance and martial sports were considered the chief accomplishments. Such being the case, all educational motives were placed in the background. There was some small increase of literature, although not as much as might have been supposed, from the Britons to the end of the Anglo-Saxon dynasty; the chief points were running, jumping, fighting, and hunting, and the same avidity for sports was evinced among them as among the Britons. The monks acted as schoolmasters, but the education they taught was aught but good. Arch bishop Theodore endeavoured to diffuse literature, and Alfred established schools, but the general state of learning still continued to be very indifferent; and the only thoroughly good point amongst them might be said to be Latin, which the monks taught their pupils colloquially; and thus their knowledge of that language, as a branch of literature, was tolerably extensive. The Normans introduced more of the civilized arts than England had as yet known; they were themselves a courteous people, and by the end of Stephen's reign, England had much progressed in the gentler arts; but it was not until the beginning of the Norman line that the great foundation-stone was laid, upon which we have built and added until the present day. Our space will not permit our tracing the various fluctuations of the mighty tide, or we would with pleasure do so; but at present our task has only been to compare the literature of the present day with that of the olden time. The rise of literature has never been so great as under the Tudors and the early Stuarts, and in the last century. Every history teems with the products of modern science and civilization, and we are glad to be able to say the strides of intellect are gradually becoming longer. Literature viewed generally. From the whole evidence we may conclude that the literature of the present day is good, and all things are thriving under it. Our hopes in the rising generation are strong, and we think the general state of education will be found, upon the whole, to be well diffused. MARWOOD H. The Reviewer. The Dictionary of Useful Knowledge. London: Houlston and Wright. THIS is an encyclopædia in miniature. Its 1,536 pages of closely printed matter contain a well-selected and skilfully abridged store of information on the various subjects comprised under the terms science, art, history, biography, topography, religion, mythology, antiquities, literature, &c. These double-columned pages of seventyfour lines of brevier type are packed with variety, and yet a wise proportionateness overrules the whole; so that matters of real interest receive full attention, while affairs of mere curiousness, though not left unnoticed, are but briefly explained. Some omissions strike us as strange; for example, while we have a sketch of Thackeray, Dickens is forgotten; Kant is left out, yet Diderot has place; Howitt (William and Mary) and the Mayhews (Henry, Edward, Horace, and Augustus) are introduced, but G. H. Lewes and the whole family of the Trollopes are not to be found. However, to make up for this, many names find admission which could scarcely have been expected, e. g., Hon. Mrs. Norton, Marochetti (the sculptor), P. J. Bailey, W. H. Ainsworth,J. R. Planchè, J. P. Collier, Thomas Aird, A. E. Scribe, Madame Dudevant (George Sand), Charles Babbage, Thomas Carlyle, &c. These names have been turned up by us at random as tests, we think fair ones, and the book comes out very favourably. We have noted, too, all the Elizabethan dramatists, many of the Italian poets, and a great number of our most famous military and naval heroes, so that in biography we have much to say in its favour. The It is quite a Gazetteer in its concise and numerous notices of places. In history the chief countries receive fair dealing in able abstracts, while the chief sovereigns of all countries seem to have been included in its columns. The scientific explanations are very numerous, and generally fairly intelligible, though brief. arts gain a good share of the well-husbanded space; while many words, which do not receive attention and explanation in our common dictionaries, are here sufficiently explained, e. g., naïveté, puisne, condottieri, forma pauperis, laniard, &c. In matters relating to the interpretation, or rather the understanding, of the Scriptures, the "Dictionary" will be found full of "useful knowledge." How such a mass of matter could be compiled, printed, and bound in two volumes, with so many woodcut illustrations, for so small a sum as half a guinea, is beyond our comprehension; but so it is, and therefore it is not to be wondered at that the sale has been already extensive. To those whose limited means hinder them from purchasing a larger work, yet who often feel the need of a companion to a merely verbal dictionary, we commend the present work. Let it be placed beside Walker's Dictionary, and English literature will suggest few difficulties which one or other, or both, will not enable the student to surmount. For the price, we know of no better books, more full and more trustworthy. The Reason Why: Physical Geography and Geology. THE "Reason Why" series has been a great success, and is capable of almost indefinite extension. The author knows how to compile attractively, and to lay out a topic so as to hit the general mind, and supply the felt wants of multitudes. No question is more frequently "popped" than “What is the reason of-so-andso?" This series offers to be a friend at such a pinch, and to reply to all such queries; and the author generally manages well. We are not quite confident that the "Reasons" given are always categorically answers to the queries; for questions often admit of more modes of answer than one; but they are always near enough the mark to satisfy the inquirer, who, indeed, often asks the reason of something which is inexplicable to reason, or by reasoning, he often only means, Will you tell me about it? This book of 380 pages contains answers to upwards of 1,100 questions, founded upon nearly 100 works of geology and geography, a list of which is given; to these a copious and well-arranged index gives ready access. The preface contains an explanation of the plan, and gives an account of the recent Nile researches. Woodcut illustrations give clearness to many points; and the work has been got out by the publishers in a style suited to the author's idea. It is not only a cheap good book, but a good cheap book, which terms are not always convertible and synonymous. Life of Rev. James Robertson, D.D. By the Rev. A. H. FEW stories of self-help and progress could have been made more interesting and improving than that of a biography of "Robertson of Ellon," had the author pictured the man as zealously as he has sketched the sectarian-had the book been written from the scholar's rather than the Churchman's point of view. Robertson was a man of strong will and much thought, of inflexible honesty and untiring zeal, of prayer and effort; a man of unshowy but substantial character, a good man, because a man of God. No one could meet him without being impressed by his broadcast thought and his invincible hopefulness. It is unfortunate for his future fame that his life has been written as an episode in a great sectarian struggle, instead of in its own epic oneness. James Robertson was the eldest son of William Robertson, farmer at Ardlaw, in the parish of Pitsligo, in Aberdeenshire, and of his wife, Barbara Anderson, where he was born 2nd June, 1803. There He was were ten children in all, and the farm was a fifty-acre one. educated at the parish schools of Tyrie and of Pitsligo, at both of which he took and kept the top of his classes. He entered Aberdeen College in his thirteenth year, occupying, along with a fellow-student, a garret room in a lane off the Gallowgate, at a cost of 1s. 6d. per week; and the whole course of his first session's attendance was covered by £8. He worked at the farm in the summer, and struggled through his classes hopefully, manfully, successfully, in the winter; in 1820 took his degree as M.A., and entered the Divinity Hall. In 1825 he was appointed parochial schoolmaster of Pitsligo, and, with his sister as housekeeper, began "to teach the young idea," which he did with great success. In 1829 he was chosen head master of Gordon's Hospital, Aberdeen, the duties of which office he performed with honest and hearty assiduity till, in July, 1832, the Earl of Aberdeen presented him to the ministry of the church and parish of Ellon, on the banks of the Ythan, seventeen miles from the university city of his native county. He could not furnish the manse, and therefore took lodgings. This difficulty was, however, in two years overcome, and three years afterwards he married the widow of his predecessor. Here he studied his sermons faithfully, and delivered them carefully; attended to the concernments of the parish, superintended the schools, farmed a little on scientific principles, read the current literature of the day, and much of the old-fashioned theology of Scotland, helped his family in their struggles, and did a deal of active work as a member of the Presbytery. About this time that mysterious stir called in Scotland the Non-intrusion Movement, which subsequently ended in the disruption and the organization of the Free Church, was active, if not virulent. Agitators passed from parish to parish, but in Ellon they found no place for the sole of their foot. Robertson was theoretically what was called, in the cant of the time, a "Moderate;” but "he was not," it is said, ". an easy-going one; he was an agonizing worker." In this great contest, which tore the Church of Scotland in twain, Robertson held to the ancient forms and styles of procedure, the actual process of the church courts at his own admission to it, though he thought that changes adapted to the age might reasonably be granted by the Government on the suggestion of the Church. The party which took the name of "Evangelical" insisted on the entire right of the Church to make laws for and of itselfadmitted no right of interference by the State,-maintained, in fact, a superiority to the State. These Robertson regarded as preposterous claims, and hence he held himself free to labour for reform, though not at liberty to act as a clerical rebel. He was for a time distrusted by both parties, but the more thoughtful men in Church and State acknowledged the common sense and sterling honesty of the liberal conservative of the Church. He occupied himself greatly in endeavouring to secure a compromise of the parties, and to keep the Church of Scotland in unity. On 18th May, 1843, that Church was disrupted: 389 parish clergymen left the "old" Church, while 681 remained; and 162 "chapel" ministers seceded, while 71 remained. Two general assemblies were constituted in Edinburgh, -the legal assembly of the Church of Scotland, and the assembly of the Seceders, i. e., the Free Church of Scotland. The latter consisted of those who had left their charges and their manses rather than submit to the domination of the State. Dr. Robertson remained in the old Church, and strove to heal the rent made in the temple. He was appointed Professor of Church History, vacated by Dr. D. Welsh, and secretary to the Bible Association; and then began the great and noble work of his life,-usually known in Scot land as the Endowment Scheme. This was a plan for proportioning, in some measure, the number of churches with the people, but of placing them all on the basis required by law, viz., that a territorial parish be assigned to each clergyman, and that suitable temporal provision should be made for his maintenance in perpetuity. There seems to be a fair prospect of the success of this noble scheme,- -a scheme which, taking its rise in Dr. Chalmers' advocacy of church extension, has rooted and grounded itself as a common-sense, practical one,-so practical as to have put the Church in possession, in reality or promise, of nearly half a million, and which has been now employed by almost all dissenting bodies, and has been inworked with the English establishment in the plan propounded by the Bishop of London for the evangelizing of the masses. Professor Robertson sank under the pressure of the mighty burden of this scheme, a true martyr to the Church, 2nd December, 1860, " in his 56th year, having adorned the age in which he lived, and done honour to the country which gave him birth." Mr. Charteris has written a good book; one which all who delight in Christian effort and vigorous self-help should read, meditate on, and imitate. The Poetical Reader, for Home and School Use. By JOHN CHARLES CURTIS, B.A. London: Simpkin, Marshall, and Co. THIS book is well adapted to supply a want. The emotional faculties are so active in childhood, that poetry seems to be the natural form of thought for young people. To present, therefore, a selection of the best poems by the best authors in a well got up form and at a cheap rate is a right and proper thing. The taste and tact displayed in this series of poetic readings is remarkable. The quotations are made from old English and modern English authors; a great many are from works yet copyright, but which the editor has received permission to include in his judiciously arranged book. We feel convinced that in many schools and homes in England the issue of this book will be regarded as a positive blessing. It is filled, not with hackneyed and stock extracts, butwhile the old is not altogether disused-with good modern and important pieces, affording full opportunity for the teacher to add |