his works indicates that he has a decided hold upon popular sympathies. We accordingly are gratified to see his poems brought out in so worthy a style as distinguish the present volumes. They are finely illustrated and printed. As the editor justly observes of Montgomery"Since the Bard of Olney, no one has surpassed him in purity of sentiment, or fervor of devotion. For half a century he has been slowly and constantly increasing in the popular favor, and his reputation has now a compass and solidity which for bid all thought of its decay." A History of the Huguenots; a new edition continued to the present time. By W. S. BROWNING. Lea and Blanchard, Philadelphia. 1845. pp. 452. $150. This work contains a succinct account of Protestantism in France from the beginning of the 16th century down to 1838. The work was originally devoted to a brief and continuous narrative of the rise of the Huguenots, their wars and final expulsion. This edition was published in 1829. The present edition is a continuation of this history to the revolution of 1830, and contains many additions and revisions, the result of the author's more accurate research. He does not attempt to go behind his facts to find out their causes, and seems desirous to give an impartial statement, though the ardor of his religious feelings may have sometimes betrayed him into great warmth of language. He has indulged in none of those episodes of biography which his subject seems almost to demand. We miss also an account of those early reformers of the Sorbonne, whose voice first broke the silence of Europe on this subject. We commend the work to our readers. Narrative of a Mission to Bokhara, in the years 1843-1845, to ascertain the fate of Colonel Stoddart and Captain Conolly. By the Rev. JOSEPH WOLFF, D.D., LL.D. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1845. 8vo. $2. Joseph Wolff may be called the Ulysses of the Churches of the 19th century. If he has nothing of the cunning and duplicity of his Grecian prototype, he has no lack of shrewdness and acquaintance with human nature. A much-enduring man, enterprizing, widely-travelled, and original, not to say erratic, he has, like the old Greek, "seen many cities and the manners of many people." This volume, mainly the record of his second adventurous visit to Bokhara, describes the experiences and perils of his benevolent mission to that country, for the purpose of inquiring the real fate of two English offi cers, one of them the personal friend and convert of Wolff, actually murdered by the Ameer of Bokhara, but whom rumor had long represented as yet living, though in imprisonment. Entering himself the lion's den, he had for a time abardoned all hope of quitting it alive, and was apparently doomed to share the melancholy end of the British officers whom he had left England to discover and liberate. His actual escape was much as if Ulysses had made, and had been permitted to survive, a second visit to the cave of the atrocious Polyphemus, to inquire how the giant had digested his guests. Born in Germany in the bosom of Judaism, he became, in mere boyhood, a convert to Christianity, in that form of Catholicism which this faith assumed in Germany in the hands of Stolberg and Sailer. Sent to Rome, that he might be educated for the priesthood in the farfamed College of the Propaganda, he dared under the shadow of the Vatican to adopt and avow opinions that made his departure from the Eternal City advisable. In a discussion with a fellow-student, who had quoted against him some opinion of the reigning Pontiff, Wolff claimed to understand Hebrew better than the Pope. Passing into England, his theological views became maiuly those of the Evangelical school, under the influence of Simeon, of Cambridge, a patriarch in that portion of the English Established Church, and under wliose influence was formed also another missionary of yet higher name and endowments, the sainted Henry Martyn. His views as to the interpretation of prophecy were in some respects assimilated to those of the devoted but erratic Edward Irving; and he looked for and announced the speedy manifestation of the Messiah in his own Palestine. A communicant but not a clergyman at first of the English Establishment, Joseph Wolff, in his first journey to the East, labored for the spiritual benefit of his Hebrew brethren, by conVersation, disputation, and the distribution of the Scriptures. Carnes, the author of "Letters from the East," describes Wolff, who was for a time his fellow-traveller, and the singleness of heart and laborious ardor with which this adventurous man devoted himself to his work, disputing with Jewish Rabbies all day, and retiring to refresh himself by digging Hebrew roots all night. He was the first to restore a new evidence of the truth of prophecy, by disinterring from the long oblivion in which for centuries it had rested, the fact that the descendants of Jonadab, the son of Rechab, yet remain, as by Jeremiah it had been predicted they should remain, a distinct people, without vineyards or harvests, inhabiting the deserts of Arabia, boasting their honored ancestry, and read ing the Hebrew Scriptures. He had much intercourse also with the Gezedees, or Devil Worshippers, and with the singular sect who claim to be disciples of John the Baptist. His first visit to Bokhara was in the course of his exploration of the East from 1831 to 1834, in quest of the ten lost tribes. He came to our own country to see if they were to be recognized in the Indians of the West; but Wolff will not acknowledge their Hebrew brotherhood. Whilst here, after his many years already spent in missionary labor in the East, he was admitted in this Western land for the first time to clerical orders in the Episcopal Church of our country, from one of whose colleges also he received his doctorate in theology. "At New York," he remarks," I must not omit to mention the kindness I received from the distinguished President, Mr. Martin Van Buren, that shrewd, clever, polished, and refined statesman. In his drawing-room I gave a short lecture before several members of the Congress."-(P. 57.) Although married to a titled English lady of the family of the Walpoles, he has not held any appointment of much emolument in the Church of that country. His later sympathies and affinities have been somewhat with the Oxford school. One of his stations was a secluded and primitive parish of Yorkshire clothiers, the smaller manufacturers, called, in that branch of industry, "piece-makers," and whose simplicity, as we recollect, he illustrated some years since in a letter to the journals, by stating that, in disregard of all orthography, they believed themselves designated for special favor in the opening sentences of the Sermon on the Mount: "Blessed are the peace-makers." He offered himself, trusting in some measure to his religious character and to the kindly reception he had met in his first travels through Bokhara, to the friends of the British officers Stoddart and Conolly, to aid in ascertaining their true fate. The result is the very interesting volume before us, commencing with a review of his earlier life and travels. Were his powers of exact observation and of nice and graphic portraiture at all equal to his remarkable opportunities, no man living, unless George Borrow is to be excepted, could furnish so interesting a book of travels as Joseph Wolff. He has been sold into slavery, he has been imprisoned, and looked to the grave as the only issue from the dungeon. He has stood before Kings, disputed with Mufties and Rabbies, and discussed the gravest truths with Derveeshes and Soofies; and he tells, most unartificially indeed, a straight-forward and unvarnished tale of the sayings, doings and sufferings of a shrewd, honest, and religious man. As to the execution of this American reprint, it is due to the publishers to say, that the portrait, in their edition, of a descendant of Mahomet, an Eastern face, full of power and character, seems to us superior in execution to its original in the English copy. Others of the pictures have a strange aspect, as being from the designs of an Oriental artist, who wrought in contempt of all the laws of perspective. The matter is of the most heterogenous character, but much of it of absorbing interest. We see the interior working of a flagitious and remorseless despotism in Bokhara; we gather notices of regions over which but few have travelled and returned to tell the tale. If our readers would see how religious energy can harden a man constitutionally timorous, dreading the sea, as some American traveller has described him, and as he honestly confesses to the Queen of Greece, and yet traversing sea and land on his benevolent errands, but still betraying so much ap prehension, that one of the names which the Ameer of Bokhara coins for him is Joseph Wolff, the Timorous One; if they would see an English Episcopalian snatched up, against all his protests, by the Abyssinian Christians, as their Aboona, or patriarch, in disguise, and compelled to spit, by way of a blessing, upon those who had made him their reluctant and protesting diocesan, "and performing such an extraordinary sputation, that my throat was completely dry" (p. 46); how he entered the streets of Bokhara clothed in his clerical robes and bearing the Bible in his hand; how he found his own name in Bokhara bruited abroad, with Eastern hyperbole, as "Mullah Joseph Wolff, the grand derveesh from England, acquainted with seventy-two languages and with seventy-two religions, and having conversed with seventy-two nations of the earth" (p. 210); if they would see how the Jews, everywhere oppressed through the Mahometan nations, retain their undying hope, and how sadly this hope blunders in its objects, as when in the days of the remorseless Tamerlane the Jews believed him to be the Messiah, and went to meet him with palms in one hand, the book of the law in the other, and the prayer "We beseech thee, O Lord, save us!" (p. 177); if they would learn how skilfully great men at the East, as in the West, contrive to keep their word-an Oriental dignitary having promised his friendly services to Wolff with the ruler of Bokhara, "This villain promised to recommend me to the Ameer of Bokhara, and he kept his word. He did so-for decapitation"-(p. 221); if they would trace visions of a new community, a reorganization of society, extending from the Owens and St. Simons and Fouriers of the West, into the heart of Asia, where a "party of derveeshes came to me and observed, The time will come when there shall be no difference between rich and poor, between high and low, when property shall be in common, even wives and children" (p. 277); let them purchase and read the ill-arranged and inartificial, but sprightly, spirited, kindly, and, as we believe, most truthful narrative, which the Harpers have presented in this cheap and beautiful volume. America and the American People, by FREDERICK VON RAUMER, and translated from the German by WILLIAM W. TURNER. New York: J. and W. G. Langley, 1846. 3vo-, pp. 512. $2. This book is far more worthy of its subject than many of greater pretensions that have heretofore appeared. It is obviously written for the Germans, and is distinguished from its predecessors by the amount and importance of authentic information it contains. The author consulted the wants of the times and the grave interest of the topics he undertook to illus trate, by seeking rather to afford his countrymen data, whereby to judge, than to display any brilliancy of his own. He has evidently had recourse to a large number of historical and congressional documents, and his volume cannot fail to be of essential service to the intelligent emigrant and political enquirer. What little he has to say on American society, manners, literature and art, strikes us as, in the main, just, as it certainly is liberal. All that savors of disapprobation is obviously at tered "more in sorrow than in anger." An idea of the practical style in which he treats the subject may be gathered from the titles of some of his chapters. After a succinct historical sketch of the settle ment of America, and the Revolution, he discusses the Constitutions of the several States, the Presidentship of Washington, Adams and Jefferson; Slavery, the Indian Population, Education, Taxes, Banks, been subjects of earnest discussion. In regard to Schiller a singular unanimity of feeling prevails. His lofty tone of sentiment, the philosophic accuteness of his perception, the deep and holy enthusiasm which sustained his character, and inspired his muse, are recognized by all in any degree familiar with his works. Carlyle, of all critics, is eminently fitted by talent and attainment worthily to trace the history of such a mind. He has not only done this with discrimination and sympathy, but the style is clear, simple and direct, wholly uninfected by the peculiar diction which renders his later works unpalatable to sa many readers. The book is in the same neat type and binding as the other volumes of the Miscellany; it is, moreover, a new edition, revised by the author. Mass and Rubrics of the Roman Catholic The same house have published the Church, translated into English, with notes and remarks, by Rev. J. R. Cotter. The work is seasonable, as it will inform Protestants more readily than any manual with which we are acquainted of the peculiar ceremonies of the Romish Church. The Roman Church and Modern Society, The Jesuits, translated from the French have, to a 1 vol. These are kindred works-perhaps we might call them partnership works. They form a part of that great religious controversy which has been waging in France for the few years past, which both in its peculiar character and its possible results has attracted extensive notice. Ever since the re-settlement of France in political quietness after its long revolutionary distresses, the Church of Rome has been endeavoring to gain its former pre-eminence and control in that kingdom. In later years, the main instrument in this project has been the order of Jesuits, who large extent, subverted the authority and influence of the settled clergy of their own church in France; and as directors and confessors obtained for themselves a very extensive influence among the families, and the youth of France. The controversy which has been thus awakened, is not like The publishers could not have made a the conflicts of the Papacy with outselection for their series, better fitted to ward opposers, in the shape of Protesenlist in its behalf the sympathies of intelli- tants against its system and doctrine gent readers than Carlyle's Life of Schil--but is among the members of that der. An edition was published in Boston one church. It is an internal contest several years since, but it has long been out of print. The literary merits of Goethe and other distinguished German writers have Schools and Colleges, Law, the Army and Navy, Charitable Institutions, Religions, and the Church and Foreign Relations. APPLETON'S LITERARY MISCELLANY, No. 5. The Life of Frederick Schiller, comprehending an Examination of his Works, by THOMAS CARLYLE. 18mo. 50 cts. among professing members of the same body. But it is a contest, the effect of which must be felt far more widely the itself extends. The labors of MM. Mi- they belong as peculiarly to our soil, as chelet and Quinet have produced great Petrarchan sonnets to Italy, or Memoirs excitement around themselves. They to France. are contending in the sacred cause of human liberty; and however we might differ with them upon the points which they would retain, as points of faith, we cannot but sympathise with them in their struggles against an unrelenting and unappeasable oppression over the rights and the welfare of men. The following passage will show their own views of the contest: You speak of liberty! speak then of equality! Is there any equality be tween us and you? You are the leaders of tormidable associations; we are isolated men. You have forty thousand pulpits that you make to speak voluntarily, or by force! You have a hun dred thousand confessionals, through which you influence the family; you hold in your hands what is the basis of the family (and of the world), the MOTHER: the child is but an accessary. What would the father do, when she returns in dismay, and throws herself into his arms, crying out, "I am eternally damned!" You are sure that the next day he will give you up his son. Twenty thousand children in your little seminaries? Two hundred thousand at present in the schools that you govern! Millions of women who act but through you! And we, what are we, in the face of such great forces? A voice, and nothing more. A voice to cry out to France. She is now warned; let her do what she pleases. She sees and feels the net, whereas they thought to catch her asleep. To all loyal hearts, one last word. To all laymen or priests (and may these last hear a free voice in the depth of their bond age), et them aid us with their courageous speech, or their silent sympathy, and let all together bless from their hearts, and their altars, the holy crusade we are commencing for God and liberty." These two works will be read in this country, we believe, with the deepest interest-we trust, not without advantage. Western Clearings. By MARY CLAVERS. Life in the West is still a fresh subject, and one which will furnish materials for ong time to come, both to the artist and writer, and especially to the mind that combines these two characters. Such is Mrs. Clavers. She writes sensibly, vigoronsly, and with excellent moral aims, and she paints in language with graphic effect and singular faithfulness to nature. These qualities rendered her "New Home" one of the most successful books of the kind ever published in this country, and they will ensure her present volume extensive popularity. It is made up of tales and skotches illustrative of the domestic manners, original characters nowhere discoverable, the wide world over, except in new settlements. We can easily imagine with what zest such tales are read across the sea. In fact, they are among the few home productions of the pen that merit the name of American literature, for The Sufferings of Christ. By a Layman1 vol. 12mo, New York: Harper and Brothers. 1845. This is a work of ability and eloquence, upon a theological theme, written by a layman; and if we may judge from terms and imagery occasionally employed, a jurist. In the tremendous oblation that ransomed the world, it has been generally assumed by divines that the human nature. alone of the Redeemer suffered-and that the Deity of the Son, from the necessarily impassible nature of the Godhead, stood aside, as it were, untouched. The writer boldly disputes the justice of this longreceived assumption, that the nature of God is of necessity impassible. Exempt as it must be from all involuntary and compulsory suffering, he aims to show that reason does not require us to regard it as also incapable of voluntary suffering; and that the language of Scripture requires us to admit such anguish, voluntarily encountered, as having been endured by the united Deity and Manhood in the task of the world's redemption. He boldly grapples with the reasoning of that profound scholar. Bishop Pearson, and with that of Athanasius, to whose influence in the fourth century he traces the establishment of the doctrine that the nature of the Godhead is of necessity, and in ail cases, impossible or incapable of the feeling of distress. In controverting this position of the ancient father, he quotes the language of Chalmers and John Harris, theologians of our own time, whom he supposes with himself to question this broad assumption. The volume is written in a tone of courtesy to those whose views he questions, and of reverence befitting the theme. It has no likeness or sympathy with some treatises of religious speculation, that might well be lettered, "Every man his own Revelation." Such writers seem first to extemporise, by stress of reason, a more perfect revelation, as they must suppose it, than the existing Bible; and then make it their business to hew down and fill up the old and stubborn Scripture of their Maker, until it somewhat resembles their own preconceived standard. Such is not the process or spirit of our author. He brings forward first. and with decided power, the Scripture testimony; and all his subsequent reaso ings are based upon, and governed by, the letter of the Divine Record. not our province to pronounce on ques tions of religious doctrine; but it is due to our author to state candidly his views It is Library of American Biography. Conducted by JARED SPARKS. Second Series. Vol. VII. 18mo. (Whole Series. Vol. XVII.) Boston: Little & Brown. 1845. When the accomplished and intelligent ruler of France, Louis Philippe, converted the deserted palace of Versailles into a gallery, where painting and sculpture displayed and adorned all the eminent names and brilliant events of French history, he effected for the fame of France, what, within narrower limits, and in a fashion more conformed to our republican and utilitarian notions, Professor Sparks seems attempting, for the fame of our country. We have, in this series of volumes, the written portraiture of the men, not only who achieved eminence in acquiring or in enjoying our national independence, but of those also who were connected with our earlier and colonial history. The volume before us presents, intentionally it may be, an instance of the local impartiality that marks the enterprize. Of the three memoirs which it contains, that of John Ribault, by the editor himself, that of Sebastian Rale, by Dr. Converse Francis, and that of William Palfrey, by Dr. John G. Palfrey; the first, carries us back to the earlier history of Florida, on the south; the second, to that of Maine, on the extreme north of our Atlantic border; whilst the third, is the memoir of one of the Revolutionary worthies of the Old Bay State. Palfrey was the Paymaster-General of the forces under Washington, received the appointment of Consul-General to France, to labor under Franklin; and when on his way to the duties of that appointment, was lost at sea. The other two memoirs, though not relating to the struggles of our War of Independence, awaken reminiscences of struggles not less earnest, far earlier in date, and likely to be longer in duration, than the strife which ended in our national existence. They are the conflicts of Romanism and Protestantism, addressing themselves, apparently, in our times, to wrestle anew for the spiritual rule of the world. The first efforts of Protestantism, long before the day of the Pilgrim Fathers, to plant its steps on the shores of North America, failed. Its foot slid in blood: but that blood was its own. Coligne, the brave and the good, who was at the head of the Huguenots of France, and who was himself afterwards one of the victims of the fatal day of St. Bartholomew that day, in the language of Macauley's noble ballad: "Of Seine's impurpled flood, And good Coligne's hoary hair all dabbled with his blood," had desired to plant a colony and refugo for his Protestant countrymen on our shores. His attempt at Brazil failing, he renewed it in Florida, in an expedition, the command of which was given to John Rebault, an experienced mariner of Dieppe, himself a Protestant. The several voyages of Rebault to Florida, his adventures with the Indians, and his massacre and that of his companions by the Spaniards after their surrender, make up à narrative of thrilling interest. The second of the lives grouped in this volume exhibits, the reverse of this medal. It is the memoir of Rale, the Jesuit father, who, with adinirable constancy and zeal, conducted a mission among the Norridgewocks of Maine. He was regarded by the forefathers of New England, with dread and detestation, as instigating his savage neophytes to sanguinary inroads upon the English colonies, and is charged by them as sharing in these cruelties himself. He fell under an expedition sent from New England, dying amid his couverts, covered with many and most inhuman wounds, at the foot of the cross, which had been erected in the centre of his missionary village. The order to which he belonged, regarded him as one of its martyrs. That he was a man of heroic and benevolent spirit, the men of every faith must admit. A very neat design, showing his death amid the Indians, near his church and at the foot of this cross, forms the vignette of the volume. Protes tants and Catholics have, in our own times, united in rearing a monument to his memory, on the scene of the tragedy, and Whittier, one of our most spirited poets, has hung upon the tomb no ungraceful wreath, in his lines on that death. WILEY & PUTNAM'S LIBRARY. Since our last, several valuable and attractive numbers have been added to this popular series of books, Hazlitt's English Poets and Comic writers, are perhaps of all his writings, the two works most strongly marked by the peculiarities of his genius and the felicities of his style. Whether the reader agrees or not with his critical opinions, these essays form the most delightful medium for renewing acquaintance with the classic authors of our native tongue. We have before enlarged on the acuteness and zest of Hazlitt's comments on life and books, and the necessity of adopting his views with caution, while we enjoy his appreciation of what his mind was fitted to analyze. Mr. Poe's Poenis appear in this series; and we doubt not the popularity of "The Raven," will give them a large sale, as we hear copies of that spirited and ingenious poem continually demanded. At this season, the juvenile books issued by the same house, are worthy of notice. They publish four of the best of Peter Parley's books, the most attractive primer we have seen, Tales of the Kings of England, Bingley's Stories from Instinct, Glimpses of the Wonderful Short and Simple Prayers, and Naturalist's Rambles forming an excellent and beautiful set of children's books. |