a special sympathy with their object and intention, their tone and tendency; because we think the tyranny of fashion, of vulgar, false and unenlightened opinion, has within a few years grown to a prodigious strength; and we deem it our duty to commend every well-directed attempt to recall the public mind to the true sources of individual and social well-being.

Besides, we think these books deserving of a great deal more attention than many a much more pretending volume. They are written with a great deal more spirit, freshness, and talent. We are sick of the solemn trash with which our press continually teems under the general class of popular and practical books. Never was a poor country so cursed with small literature of this sort. We have boys' and girls' "Own Books "-young mens' and ladies' "Friends ”—“ Guides ”—“ Aids ”—" Companions ;"--"Lectures" to old men and women, young men and maidens, children and babies,--upon all sorts of subjects--full of feeble common-place and solemn dulness-bringing down the most important subjects into shallow compends, which give only the most superficial knowledgeserving as a substitute for all thinking on the part of readers -and ministering none of that quickening impulse and culture to the fancy, the imagination, and the heart, without which mere knowledge in the head, even if thorough, is sapless and lifeless-but, being shallow, is full of cold-hearted, selfcomplacent conceit.

10. Letters of LUCIUS M. Piso, from Palmyra, to his Friend Marcus Curtius at Rome. Now first translated and published. New-York: C. S. Francis. 1837. 2 vols. 12mo.

E

We have one great objection to this book. It relates to its exhibitions of Christianity. There is an entire misconception of the true nature of Christianity, or of its distinguishing peculiarities; and its claims are exhibited in a very poor and insufficient way. The author makes it just a republicationclearer and more authentic, if you will, but nothing more than a republication-of the truths of Natural Religion; accompanied by precepts and motives of a purer morality, exemplified by its founder in a life of sublimer goodness. This, now, is all very true, and very well as far as it goes; but, taken as a just and complete view of Christianity, it is very miserable. The author appears to have no conception whatever of that grand fact in human nature-that great want of our fallen race-which being met in the Gospel, constitutes the central

peculiarity by which it is distinguished from all other systems, and makes Christianity alone the religion for sinners. It seems never to have entered the author's mind that mankind needed any thing beyond light, precepts, motives; that there was any evil in man which doctrines and instructions could not reach and cure. Hence his view of the nature and intention of Christianity-its provision of inward spiritual power to meet the everlasting wants of man, and restore him to perfect goodness, is wretchedly defective; and his exhibition of its claims to belief and trial wretchedly superficial. If the Apostle Paul had preached like the author's Probus, if John had talked about Christianity like the author's hermit, they would never have made converts to the Gospel; or if they had, it would have been converts to a Gospel superior in no essential respect to the religion of Plato or Longinus.

Having said this, we add, that in other respects it is decidedly one of the most interesting fictitious works that have lately appeared. It is in general beautifully written, with a fine perception of classical elegance exhibited in the cast of thought and in the turns of expression; while at the same time it is in a style of pure and choice English. The letters purport to be written from Palmyra, by a Roman noble who had gone thither in order to open a communication with Persia, and ascertain the fate of his brother, made prisoner some years before along with the Emperor Valerian, at the time when the Romans had been defeated by the Persian monarch. We have exquisite descriptions of Palmyra, and of the gorgeous luxury of Oriental life-a vivid picture of the magnificent Zenobia-her person, her mind, her way of life. We are introduced to her court-we mingle with the private circle of her friends with whom she relaxed from the cares of state, and indulged in the elegant and refined enjoyments of letters and philosophy. We have delightful conversations in which the great Longinus plays a distinguished part. The second volume was to our feelings less interesting than the first. The great and stirring events related,-the advance of Aurelianthe battle-the treachery which threw Zenobia into his hands-the destruction of Palmyra,--do not allow our minds to pause with pleasure for the progress and issue of the long conversations and discussions upon philosophy and religion which in

tervene.

11. Text-Book of Ecclesiastical History. By J. C. I. GIESELER, Doctor of Philosophy and Theology in Gottingen. Translated from the third German Edition, by FRANCIS CUNNINGHAM. In Three Volumes. 8vo. pp. xvi. 382.-viii. 420.-viii. 438. Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Blanchard. 1836.

It is disgraceful to English literature, that a work so defective in almost all respects as Maclaine's Translation of Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History, should have been allowed the place of a standard. Right honestly and boldly, and just as truly, Professor Sears says, under date of August 15, 1836, it "can be used no longer." What beside Warburton's great name ever got it into general use, we are at a loss to guess; unless it be,—— shame to confess it!-English ignorance.

An American* has done all for Mosheim that could be done; but even when divested of the frippery of his conceited translator, and occasionally reconciled to himself or connected in some of his many oversights, and furnished with notes erudite and full, and not seldom more valuable than the text; still, the learned chancellor of Gottingen is narrow-minded and mole-eyed, and inconsequent, (to borrow an expressive term,) and unmethodical as ever.

The author before us can hardly be accused of any of these faults; and he has had the rare good fortune to have full justice done him by a faithful and clever translator, yet he will never fill the niche of the fallen idol. Gieseler's "Text-Book" will be any thing but a text-book—a manual, a guide, an index on a large scale, a digested collection of good authorities, a well-distributed plan of study-any thing but that condensed statement of facts, inferences, and views, which may be given to the learner as the measure of information, digested into the form, best suited to his wants and capacity.

For this purpose Gieseler's text is over-concise, and his notes are far too copious. The latter, making allowance for difference of type, constitute two-thirds of the work. They consist of extracts from original authorities and materials, left in the original languages, but condensed by the omission of every thing foreign to the subject in proof or illustration of which they are adduced, and connected by short remarks of the compiler.

By this proceedure Gieseler claims to place his reader in immediate contact with the time and persons of which he writes.

* Dr. Murdock.

That he does so, in good measure, is undeniable. Yet we have doubts whether the attempt will be attended with all the success expected; whether it is not, after all, one of the laboursaving charlatanries of the day. An author in this way puts his reader off with the mere outline and dead material of his work-the brick and mortar and working-plan with specifications and becomes a historian with little trouble. The reader hurries through some eight or nine hundred pages of culled paragraphs and cut-up sentences-literary shreds and mincemeat-and is learned at slight expense of money, time, and patience; yea, and is, moreover, qualified to judge in the premises, having consulted original authorities, forsooth!

But it is not reading a cento of nicely dove-tailed quotations that puts one in possession of "the state of original testimony. Too much depends on the principle of selection and mode of presentation. Even the exclusion of matter not germane to the question, is a process of no small consequence in the result. A little word often draws long trains of inferences; and it is wonderful how apt an ingenious theorist is to throw aside as useless all that does not bear in favour of his scheme! It is impossible to eye the frequently occurring dashes besprinkled over Gieseler's accumulated extracts, without some inklings of misgiving of this kind. Grant him honest-and we believe that in general he is so-may he not have had a bias, and would not that bias give an obliquity to his array of evidence? We think there are traces of such a disturbing force in more than one of those nicer passages, where the judgment and fidelity of a historian are most tried, and the reader, if ever, needs to have all the evidence before him in his attempt to form his own decision.

How far it is desirable that the reader should assume that province-whether it be not, in truth, the business of the historian to give the colouring as well as outline of the pictureare questions too grave for discussion in a mere literary notice. But while we praise Gieseler for making much valuable information accessible and useful to many who would not otherwise have obtained it, and thank his translator for introducing him to the English reader, we protest against any substitution of his selections for original authorities, and the unfounded belief that in his compend the student is sure of finding truth entire and unsophisticated.

The arrangement of the work is its chief excellence, and a very great one. The harassing artificialness of the old division of Church history by centuries, and subdivision into collateral narratives, external and internal, has long ago caused

VOL. I. NO, II.

60

its relinquishment by German students. Natural epochs, distributed into sections, determined by the character and causes of change in the condition and relations of the Church, have been substituted. In the determination of these, there has been, as might be expected, much variety of judgment. None, we think, have been happier, on the whole, than Gieseler. His arrangement, on the first glance at the table of contents, may seem intricate. "Periods," "Divisions," "Introductions," and "Chapters," present a formidable array. It is so only in appearance. A little use convinces one that it has the great merit of being natural. The chronological epochs are few and sufficiently well-defined. The order of subjects varies in each epoch with the varying relations of the Church, and the developements of its character and functions. Thus the narrative is broken into masses, and these again are taken up and considered on their several sides, and with the necessary change of light and position. One remembers and understands the course of events and their connexion, thus presented, with a facility which they only can appreciate who have toiled through the dark mazes of the dreary labyrinth of Mosheim.

One great defect in this work it would be unpardonable not to mention. It is no religious history. The writer takes his stand without, and preserves a most icy impartiality towards the Gospel and the Church. He is not less worldly than Mosheim, though in a different way. He is the historian of human opinions, hopes, aspirings, and endeavours, not of the mystic temple of the Most High, reared without hands, of living stone, on a foundation broad and firm as Divinity itself, and towering toward the region of eternal sunshine, where its pinnacle shall be one day be set up, amidst the shoutings of the sons of GOD, and the songs of an innumerable company of the redeemed.

12. Egyptian Chronology. By A. B. CHAPIN; being a reprint of Art. II. Quarterly Christian Spectator, Vol. IX. No. 2. June, 1837, entitled-Comparison of the Biblical and Egyptian Chronologies.

THIS is a small pamphlet of twenty pages, in which the author has attempted, and we think successfully, "to bring together into a small compass, and to put into a tangible form, the substance of all the chronological fragments of the Egyptian historians, to arrange and harmonise them, so as to form