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tion, and consider his historical chapter, especially, a most useful and valuable contribution to the rapidly increasing literature of University Reform.'

History of Wesleyan Methodism. Wesley and his Times. By George Smith, F.A.S., Member of the Royal Asiatic Society, &c. Longmans. 1857.

METHODISM has often found a contemptuous corner in other histories, but now it claims a history of its own. We think it has fallen to the right man to provide this important work. Mr. Smith was eminently qualified for the undertaking, not merely by literary skill and long practice in historical narration, but also by an intimate acquaintance with the religious movement of the eighteenth century and its manifold results, and yet more by a close attachment to the Church whose history and trials he recounts. We know that some will demur to these last requisites, as though an intelligent and deep appreciation were a disqualifying circumstance, and ignorance and prejudice the only sources of genuine historic inspiration. Such persons, we presume, would confide the History of the British Constitution to a Chartist pen, and look for the only credible account of the field of Waterloo in the pages of a French historian. There is no disputing about tastes; but we may suggest that if bias of one kind or the other be unavoidable, it is, perhaps, wise to prefer that which leans rather towards than from the object under notice, and so gains a nearer view. The partiality of love gives prominence to all that is characteristic and peculiar, and so insures at least an essential truth of likeness.

But we need not to adduce this balance of advantage in favour of the present work. Mr. Smith evinces far more of the historical than the polemic spirit; and though he does not hesitate to defend those features of Wesleyan polity and teaching which have been ignorantly assailed, his plan is essentially narrative, and his tone distinguished by moderation. The style is very pleasing; the reader is led gently forward, enthralled but not excited; and it is only when he closes the volume, musing upon the full significance of that strange eventful history,' that he remembers finally to do justice to the author's admirable skill and temper.

The present is the first of two volumes embraced in the plan of Mr. Smith; yet it is complete in itself. It contains a succinct account of the state of religion and morals in the nation from the time of the Puritans to the birth of the Wesleys, including a brief notice of their ancestors, and of the moral bearing of political events upon the condition of religion. This is followed by an account of the early life and conversion of John and Charles Wesley; and the importance of these events in impressing the type of the revived Christianity of Methodism is well insisted upon. Nothing new can now be expected in reference to the lives of the Wesleys: with the leading facts we have all become familiar; but the various stages of Methodism are marked and considered by our author with peculiar care, so as to show how gradually, and without a plan or purpose beyond that of subjecting everything to the extension of spiritual Christianity, Mr.

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Wesley was led to take those steps which unconsciously separated him from the Church of his affections. This case is well made out. In the employment of lay preachers, the establishment of classes, and of the various institutions of Methodism, nothing is plainer than that Wesley had no ulterior plan. He only followed the indications of Providence, always looking primarily to the great end of his ministry, trying everything by the word of God, and earnestly seeking Divine direction in a careful renunciation of his own will. Helpers were brought to him rather than sought by him; and he was simply the student and interpreter of Providence.

We shall look with some impatience for the remaining portion of this history. The origin and early progress of Methodism has been before related in connexion with the memoirs of its founder, though never with equal skill, fidelity, or completeness. But the later period of Methodism has hitherto found no historian, and is inadequately known even by many who feel great interest in the subject. The succeeding volume will, therefore, have a peculiar value to the ecclesiastical and general student. It will present, no doubt, unusual difficulties to the author; but let him be of good courage; he has entered upon a noble work, and to write the standard history of Methodism during its first one hundred years is an object of ambition worthy even of a Christian man.

Life Studies: or, How to Live. Illustrated in the Biographies of Bunyan, Tersteegen, Montgomery, Perthes, and Mrs. Winslow. By the Rev. John Baillie. Seeley. 1857.

AN admirable idea, and beautifully carried out. Christians in various walks of life are taken as models, in some sort, of religion in common life. We notice, however, one little incongruity. As we have the labourer, the man of letters, the man of business, and the mother, we might have expected that the good soldier' would prove to be some veritable sword-wearer, who, Vicars-like, had served God in the camp and field. But the good soldier' is none other than John Bunyan, to whom the title is fully due in a religious sense. The sketches are beautiful; pieces of mosaic in brilliant colours, and effective throughout. We are always lifted above our ordinary dull level in reading John Bunyan; and however familiar, he is ever new. His Saxon style is sweet music, and his thoughts always agree thereto; his cheerful gravity, his humble boldness, his trembling joy, finding in the point, and terseness, and rhythm of his mother tongue, a fit vehicle for the utterances of his heart,-all honest, warm, and Christian as it was. The sketch of James Montgomery, the Christian man of letters,' comes home to our heart with gushing tenderness. Of our own day, there is no 'distance' between him and us; and the nearer the view the greater the enchantment.' He was a study; the type of mental purity, of irrepressible moral courage, of beautiful simplicity, and of a benevolence wide as the presence of suffering We admire him for his efforts in behalf of freedom, humanity, and religion. Like Cowper, amidst temptation and obloquy, he dared to wear a' literary coronet, and pray.' He was uniformly a Christian. In Mr. Baillie's sketch, justice is done to him. In our eyes,

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too, 'he gathered upon him an air of almost apostolic sanctity.' His old age had yet the dew of his youth, trembling and sparkling in the nearer light of heaven.

But we must stay our pen. The volume has our most cordial and earnest recommendation; and we wish especially that it may secure the notice of those who would put an attractive and impressive volume into the hands of intelligent young people. We trust Mr. Baillie will work the vein of silver which he has so successfully opened.

Glimpses of our Heavenly Home: or, The Destiny of the Glorified. By the Rev. Edwin Davies. Heylin. 1857.

OUR author's theme can never fail in interest; to every Christian it furnishes the material of his highest joy, and the consummation of his divinest hopes. In ten chapters Mr. Davies has discussed topics which comprise the substance of what we yet know of heaven, except in the most satisfactory mode of studying this delightful theme, in the earnest of the inheritance enjoyed by every experimental Christian, the miniature photograph upon the heart,-the 'glorified joy' of the full assurance of faith and hope. We wish our author would, in a future edition, add this chapter, and show how the nature, employments, and pleasures of the Christian, place him on the borders of the better land, and are to him as the grapes of Eshcol to the Israelites. The volume will be read with pleasure by all who say, like Bunyan in his vision of heaven's blessedness, 'Which when I had seen, I wished myself among them.' It is a profitable book.

Personal Narrative of the Origin and Progress of the Caoutchouc or India Rubber Manufacture in England. By Thomas Hancock, of the firm of Charles Macintosh and Co., London and Manchester. With Engravings. London: Longman. 1857.

ONE of the most interesting of modern publications. Mr. Hancock is the person to whom the present extensive manufacture of caoutchouc owes its origin. He has been engaged in the work about thirtysix years; and, in the volume before us, he gives the details of his first humble beginnings in this branch of art, tracing it step by step through all its subsequent improvements, until the substance which at first was hardly known in any other capacity than a rubber for pencil marks, became the material for cushions, pillows, swimming-belts, pumpbuckets, door-springs, cylinders, overalls, boots, hats, coats and cloaks, buoys, rafts, pontoons, bags, knapsacks, pleasure-boats, and almost every conceivable article. Mr. Hancock took out his first patent in 1820, and between that period and 1847 he had no less than thirteen additional patents for other improvements and inventions in the same line. He has given us a graphic description of the difficulties which environed him in bringing the incipient art to its present perfection;

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and his book is another striking testimony to the wonders which an ingenious mind will achieve when allied with indomitable energy and steady perseverance.

The Crystal Sphere: or, Reflections on a Drop of Water. By J. Milton Sanders, M.D., LL.D. London and New York.

'WHAT is there,' says the author, 'in a drop of water, adequate to supply the materials for a long essay; and such a one as is calculated to interest those thoughtful persons who perchance may be induced to peruse this unpretending little volume ? It is true that a drop of water is apparently a thing of small moment, almost too unimportant to come within the cognizance of that active mind which is proned to grasp at the vast and the sublime, to the total exclusion of what is minute and apparently trifling.' He then proceeds to show that this tiny crystal sphere is a wondrous reservoir of various natural forces, chemical agencies, and animate existence, to the latter of which the work is principally devoted. Here we start and shrink with dismay at the sight of those 'creeping things innumerable,' which throng every drop of that very fluid we are daily accustomed to drink with such wonderful composure. All the beasts, reptiles, and insects, that ever came within the range of our naked eye, are nothing in number as compared with those myriads of creatures which we have unconsciously imbibed under the impression that we were drinking pure water. Ay, but what is pure water? We suppose it to be the simple fluid, the unadulterated mixture of so much oxygen and hydrogen. And so it is; but-lamentable conclusion!-it appears that such water is of no use for drinking. Protest against it as much as we please, if we are to have good water, we must take the live stock with it. Now if the reader can manage to shut out from his mental vision the part which these multitudinous animals are taking in his own nourishment, he will find it a very agreeable recreation to spend an hour or two with Dr. Sanders in looking through his microscope. He will be satisfied that ' a drop of water, although a trivial thing, is really an unbounded world, and full large enough for the Creator to exhibit to us in a striking light an illustration of the beneficence and wisdom which pervade throughout every department of nature.' We must, however, remind him that the book in its getting up is decidedly on the bookmaking plan; the smallest quantum of letter-press being spread over the largest quantum of paper; though this may be no objection to those who wish to have a pretty volume for the boudoir. The composition also displays some Americanisms, which illustrate without adorning it. Prolificacy,' though found in Webster's dictionary, is not to our liking; and if proned be not a typographical error, in the expression previously quoted, that the active mind is proned to grasp at the vast and the sublime,' we hope that its use as a verb will be entirely confined to the Transatlantic shores. We would rather have a score or two additional infusoria in our glass of water, than allow such expressions as these to get into the well of English undefiled,

Logic, in its Application to Language. By R. G. Latham, M.A. London: Walton and Maberly.

DR. LATHAM has been a diligent worker on the English Language; and, perhaps, the only drawback on the general excellence of his productions is, that of riding his hobby somewhat too hard. His books have thus, to a considerable extent, been echoes of each other; and, while displaying much admirable power of mind, too often remind us of the great importance of knowing when to stop,-of discovering when the mine has been so far explored as to refuse to yield much fresh material to the same investigator. The volume before us,which, from the heartiness the author still displays in his favourite pursuit, would appear to be by no means the valedictory volume,— is said to be 'Logic in its Application to Language;' but it is impossible to say what particular relevancy this title has to the book itself. If it means logic in its relation to the grammatical forms of language, then there is only one part of the work devoted to this object: but if by language' is meant merely speech, then it is only logic in its relation to logic; for it is the common logic of the schools to which the first half of the book treats us. We say the common' logic, in its leading characteristics: the editing is Dr. Latham's, and the getting up is so peculiarly his own, that in no other work of the class have we seen any thing to resemble it. The latter part of this treatise where grammar and philology are mainly the subjects-will well repay a very careful perusal; but of the purely logical department we fear that we cannot say so much. Logic is a dry subject in the hands of any one, but in Dr. Latham's hands it is very dry. It is Euclid himself turned logician,-the very integral and differential calculus of subject and predicate. When, therefore, Dr. Latham says, 'I should be glad to think that either the present work, or some work like it, was to be studied earlier than even the first rules of the ordinary grammars,' we must beg leave to say that we cannot imagine any thing more undesirable than such a way of commencing grammatical studies. The Doctor himself despairs of witnessing such a consummation, regarding it as magis optandum quàm sperandum ; and this state of things we hope will continue.

Sermons on the Character of the Old Testament. By the Rev. Isaac Williams, B.D., late Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford. London: Rivingtons. 1856.

THE very favourable opinion we entertain of Mr. Williams as an author, led us to look with no small interest to his volume on Scripture Characters. We expected to find in it the same evidence of original power, and the same successful and happy treatment of the subjects he handled, as appear in his previous writings. It would be a high but insufficient praise of this present book, were we to say that our expectation was not disappointed; for in fact we have been very highly gratified, and not a little spell-bound, by its moral influence. The discourses are thirty in number, each occupied in delineating

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