On the local industrial employments and interests of the Weald he has collected much useful information. The cloth manufactures, the iron-works, the fulling-mills, the establishment of the Flemings at Cranbrook and elsewhere, the fisheries, improvements, drainage and reclamation of the Weald, and kindred subjects, are examined and described with no little research and discrimination. That upon the various tenures of land and legal customs of Kent he should have much to say, and be able to correct the erroneous notions of other writers, is no more than might be expected, as we have hinted already, from the author's intimate local knowledge and his peculiar occupations. Of these subjects our limits allow us no room to speak in detail; but Mr. Furley's observations on the Denes of the Weald, of which he has traced 470, whilst Kemble professed to find no more than 25 altogether in Kent and Sussex,-his remarks on the origin and formation of boroughs, of parishes, and their relations to manors,—may be recommended to our readers. These subjects are confessedly among the most difficult and disputed of all archæological problems; and Mr. Furley may justly claim the credit of solving the difficulties connected with them, so far as that solution, at present, is possible.

In conclusion, we can only wish that all counties were as fortunate as Kent in their historians. It is a comfort to take up a handy book, in three moderate-sized volumes, containing so much valuable and readable information, instead of having to sink under four or five ponderous and elephantine folios, in which hitherto it has been the orthodox fashion for the local historian to present the results of his labours. If two or three men could be found in every county, like Mr. Furley, to illustrate that portion of it with which they were familiar, in portable and moderate volumes, no better service could be done for the history of the English people no better help could be provided towards elucidating our manners, our laws, the growth of our political institutions, the relations of all classes of which this great commonwealth is composed. We are the more anxious on this point, because the greater facilities of intercourse, the press, the railroad, and the steamer, are rapidly obliterating local habits, customs, and peculiarities; and all traces of them must be lost in a few years without such labours as those of Mr. Furley. Nor can we help thinking that, in the wide extension of School Boards, those who are interested in giving the children of the rustic some taste of geography would do well to take their start from the local geography of the county or township to which such children belong. More geography, botany, agriculture, geology, and, in fact, all the 'ologies, might be taught in this familiar and attractive form than in any other. But for this purpose we want more than one Mr. Furley.

presents us with two volumes out of the four which he intends to devote to the subject. Starting from the period when men essayed to cross rivers by means of inflated skins, or hollowed logs, the author has, as he has proceeded, omitted no ramification of his gradually widening subject that is likely at all to be of interest to the reader, or that it seems necessary to explain. He has taken pains to illustrate, where possible, the varying shapes of ships at different periods, from the barge-like Egyptian boat to the Venetian galley, from the galleons and trading vessels of the Middle Ages, down to the first-rate East India clipper of the early part of the present century. Here especially the copious and exhaustive dictionary of M. Jal has furnished much help, and the mediæval seals of cinque-ports and maritime corporations have contributed contemporary information about rigging, fitting, and general proportions of outline and subordinate parts.

It is evident that Mr. Lindsay has given care and time to his speculations regarding the methods of constructing, manning, and working the triremes and quinqueremes of classical times, but the darkness of the problem has not received much new light from the author's labours, beyond what is due to a collective treatment of the literature of the subject. And this is so, not because Mr. Lindsay is not as capable of arriving at sound conclusions on this particular point as any one else, but because the data without which no problem, however simple it may be (and this the one in question is not), can be satisfactorily settled are, in this case, not sufficient to allow of correct solution. Although sculptures (a cast of a particularly valuable fragment found in Athens has lately been acquired by the British Museum), numismatics, and the written testimony of authors and miscellaneous ancient evidences, undoubtedly prove that more horizontal rows of oars than one were employed by the ship-designers of old to increase the rate of propulsion of galleys, yet the propelling of a mass of given weight through a dense and occasionally antagonistic medium demands the employment of far too heavy and cumbrous a lever, far too firm and solid a fulcrum, to admit of the possibility of great length in such a lever. Hence it follows that the highest banks of oars must have been inclined to the water at an angle little removed from ninety degrees, greater length being proportionately required for the oar as the angle is made to become more and more acute, until we overstep the limits demanded by the reveries of an indulgent but ingenious visionary, whose suggestions, printed by Mr. Lindsay in the Appendix to his first volume, would people quinqueremes with Titans of superhuman strength, pulling fir-poles of thirty-five feet long, at least twenty feet above water-mark. It is not difficult to understand that such a contrivance as a pole of these dimensions would be practically useless from the impossibility of working it sufficiently fast; while oars of such length and of slighter make would be broken at the first stroke from the great length of the leverage; and if relays were on board the draught of such a vessel would be enormous. Never

noticing, and help to indicate the peculiar, and henceforth narrowed, bearings of the question. He says:

"All galleys had their oar-ports placed obliquely above each other in horizontal rows. No galley had more than five horizontal rows. Every galley derived its name or class from the number of horizontal rows. All galleys above a quinquereme were likewise classed according to the number of rows. In their case, however, the oblique rows were counted; but in all cases, from the smallest to the largest, including Ptolemy's tessara-conteres, each row, whether oblique or horizontal, was a distinct bank of oars, which, like in wooden men-of-war, constituted the only basis the number of guns, wherever they were placed, for their classification.""

The maritime commerce of antiquity; the Tyrian trade; the connexion of the Phoenicians, those ancient toilers of the sea, with the "Cassiterides Insulæ"; the intercourse between Carthage and Spain; the caravan trade of Southern Asia and India by way of the Caspian Sea; the navigation of the Nile by the Egyptians; and the varied phases of commerce and marine under the ever-changing influences of Roman civilization and conquest, have been well and fully handled by the indefatigable author, who leaves few points, even those of secondary and diminished interest, unexplored, few questions of history or practice unexamined. The peculiar and powerful influence of Constantinople and Venice upon the medieval developments of the till then latent powers of wooden walls is treated with great care, and a large portion of the work is devoted to the consideration of the numberless points connected with the rise, formation, and gradual extension of British maritime operations, and the relations of our nation with other countries. would be impossible, in our limits, to recapitulate even the principal subjects which have afforded occupation to Mr. Lindsay's pen. The number of authors consulted and the collection of references are alone sufficient to indicate that he has spared himself neither pains to become acquainted with the authorities for his statements, nor trouble in contrasting and fairly weighing opinions of others, too often at first sight conflicting. The first volume concludes with the death of Columbus, an event which marks an era in the Middle Ages. 'The Life of Prince Henry the Navigator,' and the Select Letters of Columbus,' by Mr. R. H. Major, of the British Museum, whose learned researches into the history of these subjects are well known, have formed the principal groundwork of that portion of the book devoted to the greater mariner; Washington Irving's 'Life of Columbus,' and Col. Yule's edition of Marco Polo's Travels have also been made use of.

It

If we come to point out what has been ill done or neglected in these volumes, it is right that some attention should be drawn, first of all, to the scanty number of original and hitherto unpublished documents which Mr. Lindsay has incorporated in his appendix. It is pretty well known that an enormous mass of original matter exists in the British Museum, and in other similar repositories, relating to the early and middle history of England; and since access to these deeds has for some time been rendered easy by the completion of that long desired "classed catalogue," Mr. Lindsay would have done a service to those of his readers who love to explore for themselves a little, if he had given a schedule of those manuscripts which our national library

possesses, and which form, as it were, the

NOVELS OF THE WEEK.

by lashes long and dark enough to move the

these matters. The documents in the appendix are excellent as far as they go, but we think a synopsis or breviate of several hundred similar pieces, while occupying the same space, would be infinitely more serviceable to many a reader than the ipsissima verba of a dozen or so. Mr. Lindsay ought to devote the best portion of one of his remaining volumes to this hitherto neglected subject. The next point to be mentioned is the meagreness of the index. An index of fifteen pages is not of the slightest real use for a book containing upwards of six hundred and fifty pages of condensed information, which is at the rate of forty-three pages of text to one page of index. We say fearlessly, that three times the allotted space might have well been spared for what is really the key of the work. But this is a matter also capable of rectification as the work draws nearer to its completion.

The second volume tells the well-known tale of Vasco da Gama, and his varied fortunes. The story loses nothing in the setting Mr. Lindsay has given it, Lord Stanley's translation of Correa's account being followed with scrupulous fidelity. Then follow the adventures of Sebastian Cabot in the services of England and of Spain, during the reigns of Henry the Seventh, Henry the Eighth, and Edward the Sixth. The names and fame of

Albuquerque terribil, Castro forte,

E outros em quem poder não teve a morte, seem to have slipped from Mr. Lindsay's memory; at least, they do not appear in the index, nor did we notice them on looking through that portion devoted to Indian affairs, but there is no doubt that those great commanders, Albuquerque, Castro, and other Viceroys, completed, by their prowess and courage, a work but imperfectly begun by those who had gone before them, we mean the consolidation of the Portuguese, i.e., the first European, power in India, an early and important step towards our own holding of that continent to-day. The naval operations of Great Britain, as far as they bear upon her commercial relations with colonies, or foreign countries, are passed in review by the author with much consideration. The institution of a Royal Navy by King Henry the Eighth; the successes of Hawkins; the equipment and destruction of the Armada; the voyages of Johnson and Finner, Frobisher and Drake; the formation of the Dutch and English East India Companies; the enterprises of Dampier, Anson, Byron, and Cook; the gradual upbuilding of the English Navigation laws; and the unhappy complications which arose between America and England at the close of the last century, form the principal points which have exercised Mr. Lindsay's time and care in his second volume. This care and time, we may conclude by saying, has been judiciously spent in gathering up, from an infinite number of sources, much that is interesting, useful, and necessary in the way of information, upon a subject of paramount importance to such a nation as ours.

Linley Rochford. By Justin McCarthy. 3 vols. (Same publishers.)

The Ground Ash. By the Author of 'The Fight at Dame Europa's School.' (Salisbury, Brown; London, Simpkin & Marshall.) Queenie. 3 vols. (Hurst & Blackett.) WHO can the people be who write such novels as 'True to Her Trust'? The experienced novel - reader knows the article well, but for the benefit of those who find other things to occupy their time than the study of such unsatisfactory productions as suit the circulating libraries, we may take the volumes before us as a typical specimen of the particular class we mean. Two children, Jack and Enid Leyburn, son and daughter of a country banker, are just left motherless at the beginning of the story, and we find them with a young cousin, Merle Kinnardson, occupying in the first chapter the chief position, which they are to retain all through. We do not complain of this, though, as Mrs. Leyburn's death is only of use in so far, that from it dates the "trust" to which Enid was to be "true," namely, the protection of her cousin Merle, we venture to think that there is a waste of power shown in using so forcible an incident as a death at the outset of a story, merely to explain its title. Beyond this, Mrs. Leyburn's death produces absolutely no effect, except in bringing a certain Aunt Jane, whom Jack and Merle detest, while Enid tolerates her, to take care of the children. Incidentally, we may give a few words from the opening of Chapter II., to show the style which our author affects :—

"Earth to earth.' Rattle! 'Ashes to ashes.' Rattle! Dust to dust.' Rattle, rattle, rattle! So the Very Reverend Archdeacon Hamilton, rector of St. Winifred's, scattering a handful of mould and gravel on the coffin."

This short passage marks pretty clearly a follower of our modern word-painting school, which aims at an impossible vividness of description, and is happily unconscious of its own utter want of power to observe accurately what it wishes to describe, a want shown in the passage we have quoted by such trifles as the title given to an Archdeacon, and the notion of its being the officiating clergyman's duty to scatter mould and gravel on the coffin, or a little further on, by such a combination as "The Rev. Dr. Northcote, M.A.," or "assize times, which only occur once in three years," or the one University "stroke" who loses two stone in the first few days of his training, or the other who is to play in the billiard match (how steady his hand would be at the time when that match is usually played!), or his crew who "hang feather," or by a dozen other instances, not a whit less ludicrous than the blunders, which we are all so ready to laugh at, of French authors who talk about "Sir Peel," or make the House of Lords cry "Hurrah! hip, hip, hip." To resume the story. The only other person of importance who appears in the introductory chapters, is a friend of Jack's, Clifton Gore by name, a boy with a "broad fair forehead, off which the golden hair falls in short silken waves," and a "delicately cut little nose, with just sufficient ripple in its Grecian outline to redeem it from effeminacy," and "long laughing eyes of that rare violet blue, and shaded

we regret to say, as he turns out a pretty considerable" scoundrel, the author "loves better than many a better man." By and by, the cousins go to Oxford, where Jack becomes stroke of the University boat (in which capacity he performs the remarkable feat of "wasting" mentioned above), and gets a second class-we rather think, in his "little-go," while Merle reads books of "that accursed school of enervated morals and false sentiment" represented by "the world-known titles of Paul de Kock, Rousseau, Goethe, and Comte," goes rather beyond flirtation with a bookseller's daughter, and gets plucked (or "ploughed," as the author, evidently with a pleased consciousness that this is the right word, at all events, calls it), besides running into debt, and incurring not unnaturally the wrath of his uncle, Mr. Leyburn. About this time, Jack has fallen in love with, and got engaged to, a certain Barbara, or Baby, Delamayne, daughter of a gentleman who is quite a match for others of the persons introduced; for not only did he contrive to be tutor (called also "Master") of Merton after his marriage, we are, or the author is, speaking of thirty years ago; it might not be so odd now, but he also managed to "purchase the small and poorly paid living of Hollingwood" without any unpleasant legal consequences. His wife, Barbara's mother, appears to have been "

a Trevoil," and the author gives us a couple of pages, besides frequent incidental remarks, on the characteristics of the Trevoils, which remind us of Mr. Henry Kingsley at his worst. However, Baby, being a Trevoil, lets Clifton Gore make love to her, and Jack finds it out, and there is a good deal of melodramatic business. Meanwhile, Mr. Leyburn is thrown from his horse and killed, for no particular reason, as far as we can see, since the story goes on as well without him as with him, and Enid has got engaged to Merle. That gentleman, however, finds his old Oxford flame in Miss Lottie Dynevor, a popular actress, and wastes a good deal of his time with her, eventually giving up the idea of taking orders, in obedience to her commands. This is all reported by a friend to Enid, and so Jack writes an indignant letter to Merle, and the engagement is broken off. Miss Dynevor marries an old French count; Merle dies of brain fever; Baby is burnt in a Paris hotel; and ultimately Clifton Gore marries Enid, as we have all along seen to our regret that he was predestined to do. The only really pleasant person in the book would, in real life, have been Enid. We can see the sort of girl whom the author has attempted to draw, much as we can see what is intended by a child's attempt at a picture of, say, a cow; but the success is about equal in both cases, from an artistic point of view. We have dwelt at more than our usual length on this book because it is a specimen of a school which aims at hiding its own utter want of accuracy and observation under a profusion of minute detail, its ignorance of human nature under a few scraps of Rochefoucauld, and the general meagreness of its imagination under a mass of spasmodic verbiage, to which the constant introduction of references to subjects held sacred by the majority of its readers gives no dignity, but renders it all the

more offensive. That this school finds any readers is, to our mind, a symptom of a from healthy state of the national taste a morals.

The same publishers who are responsible for the production of 'True to Her Trust,' have in 'Linley Rochford'sent forth a book so completely unlike it that to give our readers an estimate of the latter work it would be almost sufficient to put a negative to all that we said of the former. Mr. McCarthy's language is correct and well chosen the events of his story bear each its due and proportionate share in working it out; his scene is not over-crowded with characters, and those whom he introduces are reasonable, probable, and consistent with themselves. None of them is, perhaps, very new, but it is not given to every one to invent a totally new and yet consistent character, and if Mr. Tunham, the kind-hearted man of eccentric habits and rough exterior, or Louis Rochford, the handsome, selfish, well-educated epicurean, whose selfishness, as it always will do, makes at last a scoundrel of him, or his friend, Roche Valentine, the man of universal abilities, but manqué for want of the one "power of taking trouble" that constitutes genius, if all these and others be types with which we are not unfamiliar, at least it is satisfactory to see them once again, well combined, or "composed," as artists say, and playing their parts in the imaginary world of the novel, much as we know they would do in real life. Mr. McCarthy, too, is not devoid of that real power of observation of small things, which many who attempt far greater fullness of picturesque detail want almost wholly. "The man hammering at a huge stone, whose arm could be distinctly seen drawn back to give the coming stroke before the sound of that just given reached Linley's ear," is an instance of one sort; of another is the beautiful girl, without an idea in her head, who "sometimes looked at one with her lips parted by a sweet half-pensive smile, and her small white teeth displayed, and she was evidently going to say something very kind and sweet; and the faint blush dawned and died, and then the eyelids drooped, and the parted lips closed, and the desired utterance did not come "; all of which "meant that Cynthia thought she had something to say, but found on trying that she had not." We will not enter into the troubles of poor Linley, married at nineteen to a man twice her age, in whom she expects and intends to find a hero, or, failing that, an honourable gentleman, instead of which she sees him, as we have said, sink deeper and deeper into selfish epicureanism, until at last even his gentlemanly feeling disappears, and, after being false to his wife in thought for a long time (if such a man can ever be said to be true), he forms a connexion with a girl for whom she herself had done everything, raising her from beggary, and "making a lady" of her. This Linley discovers, and her idol is finally broken. Rochford dies almost immediately after the discovery, and, in due course, Linley marries Valentine, and so, not unpleasantly, the story ends.

The reputation acquired by a lucky squib, which, happening to fall in with the temper of a portion of the British public at the moment, succeeded better than its intrinsic merits deserved, has encouraged the author of

The Fight at Dame Europa's School' to extend his functions as a self-appointed instructor of his countrymen from the field of politics to that of theology. As yet, however, he has got little beyond the stage of clearing the ground, and we do not quite see what he proposes to plant in place of what he is attempting to eradicate. He has in this and his last work proved, satisfactorily no doubt to himself, that in his own words, modern Christianity is no better than civilized heathenism, and that any attempt to render it so is utterly impracticable. This last theory is demonstrated in the book before us by the history of a little boy, whose father not believing in Christianity, but wishing partly to give it a fair chance, and partly to confute his parson, sends him for preparatory instruction to a clergyman, who lets him read no profane authors, nor form any acquaintance with classical mythology. When after four years of this training the boy goes to a public school, he naturally gets into difficulties both with the masters, who object to having questions about the heathen deities answered by long sermons on the duties of Christians, and with the elder boys, one of whom has a valuable statue of Apollo broken by the zeal of the youthful confessor. After three days of this sort of thing, he dies, in consequence of the frequent lickings which his instancy in and out of season has brought upon him. We do not exactly understand which horn of the dilemma (it, by the way, is only a dilemma as against believers in "verbal inspiration") the author would cut away: whether he would have us literally give our coat where our cloak has been taken, and so on, or abandon Christianity in profession as completely as he insists we have abandoned it in practice; whether Nigel's conduct or his father's logic is to guide us in the question. Nor does it fall within our province to discuss the point; all we can say is, that the method used might equally well be applied to our social and physical as to our religious life, and with a similar reductio ad absurdum, as has more than once been found in the cases of people who have not seen that our whole line of action must be the resultant of forces acting in different directions, and that any attempt to reason as if all but one of these might be neglected is sure to lead us to a point where logic must be laid aside, and escape becomes only possible by the application of the commonplace solvitur ambulando.

'Queenie' is a fairly well-written novel of the school of which Miss Broughton is perhaps the mistress. We cannot say it is one for which we have any strong predilection; we do not care much for the sorrows and sentimentalities

of the "girl of the period," while she is being made love to by two men at once, who both call her "darling" at the end of their sentences. Nor are we fond of the style which tells its story throughout in the present tense: though this is a little unjust to Miss Mary Demeric, otherwise "Queenie," the heroine and autobiographer, for, at the end of the second volume, the shock of a little brother's death shakes her into the more usual perfect, which, with occasional relapses, she continues to use till the end of her story. There is the customary amount of balls, dressing, tea-drinking, and so on; less than the usual amount of bad grammar, French, and vulgarity; not more

than three or four passages from well-known poets misquoted; and two really amusing children, who are the only thoroughly satisfactory characters in the book, so that we feel personally ill-used when one of them is killed only for the sake, as far as we can see, of harrowing the reader's feelings. Those who like this sort of novel may read 'Queenie' with less disadvantage than many others of the same kind; while what we have said will be enough to warn those who look for something better in fiction from wasting their time on it.

OUR LIBRARY TABLE. We have on our table The Public Worship Regulation Act, 1874, edited by W. G. Brooke, M.A. (King), Indian Famines, by C. Blair (Blackwood),-Newcastle-upon-Tyne, by B. Plumtenance of Health, by J. M. Fothergill, M.D. mer (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Reid), The Main(Smith & Elder),—The Second Exercise-Book, by L. Contanseau (Longmans), The Intermediate Geography, by the Rev. A. Mackay, LL.D. (Blackwood),-Characteristics of English Poets, by W. Minto (Blackwood), -Specimens of the Table-Talk of the late Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Routledge),— The Lost Model, by H. Hooper (Trübner),—The Best of Husbands, by J. Payn, 3 vols. (Bentley), -My Picture, and other Poems, by G. Butt (Houlston), The Immortality of the Soul, by the Rev. H. L. Harris (Vallentine),-A TheologicoPolitical Treatise, by G. D'Oyly Snow (Trübner),

Strivings for the Faith (Hodder & Stoughton), -The Higher Life, by J. L. Brereton M.A. (Bickers), and Il Divano di 'Omar Ben-al Fare'd, translated by P. Valerga (Florence, Cellini). Among New Editions we have Brinkley's Astronomy, edited by J. W. Stubbs, D.D., and F. Brünnow, Ph.D. (Longmans), The Army Lists of the Roundheads and Cavaliers, edited by E. Peacock (Chatto & Windus),-Memoirs of a Huguenot Family, translated from the Autobiography of the Rev. J. Fontaine (Religious Tract Society),-Mornings at Bow Street, by J. Wight, illustrated by G. Cruikshank (Routledge),-A Popular History of the Insurrection of 1798, by the Rev. P. F. Kavanagh (Dublin, M'Glashan & Gill),—and The Conscript, and Waterloo, by MM. Erckmann-Chatrian (Smith & Elder). Also the following Pamphlets: London Hospitals, by W. Rendle (Willis),-The Teacher's Assistant and Key, by R. B. Alexandre (Kingston, Jamaica, Macdougall),-and Haydn's Dictionary of Dates, Part XII. (Moxon).

LIST OF NEW BOOKS. Theology.

Book and its Story, by L. N. R., 24th edit. 12mo. 4/ cl.
Christopherson's (Rev. H.) Sermons, cr. 8vo. 7/6 cl.
Daily Counsels for the Young, 12mo. 1/ swd.
Lennie's Bible, 18mo. 1/ cl.
Murray's (A.) 2,220 Scripture References, 12mo. 1/ swd.
Tait's (W.) Faith in the Blessed God, cr. 8vo. 6/ cl.
Winterbotham's (Rev. R.) Sermons and Expositions, 7,6 cl
Philosophy.

Macvicar's (J. G.) Sketch of a Philosophy, Part 4, 8vo. 9/ swd.

Law.
Farnfield's (W. H.) Law of Pilotage on the Thames, 2/6 cl. limp.
Fine Art.
Atkinson's (J. B.) Studies Among the Painters, 4to. 7/6 cl.

Lee's (J. E.) Roman Imperial Profiles, 8vo. 31/6 cl.
Thompson's (S.) The Old Masters, imp. folio, 73/6 cl.

Lessing's (G. E.) Laocoon, 12mo. 5/ cl.

Poetry.

Taylor's (Augustus) Poems, 12mo. 5/ cl.
Music.

Jager and Rimbault's Gallery of German Composers, 25/ cl.
Original Christy's Minstrels' Album, Book 1, 4to. 1/ swd.

Weiss's 21 Bass and Baritone Songs, Book 3, 4to. 1/ swd.
History.

Cutts's (Rev. E. L.) Turning Points of English Church History, cr. 8vo. 3/6 cl.

Fuller (T.), Life of, by J. E. Bailey, 8vo. 25/ cl
Granville's (A. B.) Autobiography, 2 vols. 8vo. 32/ cl.
Harrison's (B) Memorials, by C. Vaughan, 18mo. 1/ cl.
Phillimore's (C. M.) Pictures of Early History of Venice, 1/ cl.
Townsend's (Rev. G. F.) Siege of Colchester, cr. 8vo. 2/ cl.
Trotter's (L. J.) History of India, cr. 8vo. 106 cl.

Geography.

Arctic Experiences, edited by E. V. Blake, roy. 8vo. 25/ cl.
Cook's Handbook to Venice, 12mo. 1/ bds.
Geiger's (J. G.) Peep at Mexico, 8vo. 24/ cl.