66 incomparably the best popular commentary on | cott and Co.) in the earnest hope that it supplied the Bible in any tongue. The last work of his the want which all clerical students have so greatly life was to revise the volumes on the New Testa- felt. Buck's "Dictionary" was never adequate, ment for a new edition; and the last time he put and is quite out of date. "Faiths of the World" pen to paper was to write a letter to the publish- is too ponderous, and too much encumbered with ers concerning his notes on the book of Acts, the useless though curious matter. M'Clintock and new edition of which had just appeared. His Strong's Cyclopedia" promises to afford the work was not exempt from the criticism, we might best theological dictionary in the English lanalmost say the persecution, to which at one time guage; but the fact that it includes also biblical, he was himself subjected. There are few men historical, and even biographical articles, prevents who would have had the patience to submit to it from occupying the niche to which we refer. the attacks that were made upon his commentary But Mr. Blunt is so far committed to a system upon the Epistle to the Romans, and have un- that he is unable to appreciate any opinions but dertaken no reply in subsequent volumes or sub- his own, which are those of the extremest Ansequent editions. Yet of all commentaries on glican High-Churchism. He not only refers the the Bible there is, perhaps, none less controver-reader to a future "Dictionary of Sects and Hersial than that of Mr. Barnes. Of all its good qualities there is none more striking than the calmness, the candor, and the impartiality of its statements. The death of such a man should not bring mourning to the hearts of those who share his faith. It is impossible to sorrow for him who, in the prospect of that future on which he has entered, was led into the strain of exultation with which he closes his last commentary that on the Psalms; nor for ourselves, since he was not taken till his life's labor was completed, and since of him it may so emphatically be said, "His works do follow him." esies" for information concerning the Unitarians and Swedenborgians, but complacently transfers Methodists and Congregationalists to the same fellowship, while of the existence of Baptists and Presbyterians he is entirely oblivious. Whoever wants a dictionary of the doctrinal theology of the High-Church party will find it admirably stated in this volume; whether the information is worth so many pages is a question. Messrs. Hurd and Houghton have completed in four volumes their American edition of Smith's Bible Dictionary. It is an admirably executed but not wisely planned work. The plan has been to give the articles in the original dictionary of Dr. SMITH without alteration, and then in notes and supplemental articles to afford additional information. The consequence is that the reader often finds an error in the English article corrected in the American additions, or a theory advocated in the former combated in the latter. The confusion existing to some extent in the original work is thus increased; and while the additions and corrections enhance the value of the work, they make a dictionary less valuable than a purcly American book would have been which used the materials of both Smith and Kitto. THE previous paragraph had just been penned when the telegraph brought us the intelligence that Dean Alford of Canterbury died suddenly on the 12th day of January. This is all the intelligence we have of his death. To the reading public generally he is probably best known by his poorest work-a little volume on the Queen's English. To a smaller circle of admirers he was known by his poems and fugitive contributions to the religious periodicals. His life work, however, that by which he will be known to the future, is his "Commentary on the Greek New Testament." It is for scholars what Barnes's com- Professor POND'S History of God's Church mentary is for the common people, incompara- (Ziegler and M'Curdy) is a bulky volume of bly the best in the English-in our judgment, and over a thousand pages, issued in the ordinary we speak after giving it a trial of many years-in-style of subscription books, with very poor encomparably the best in any language. Quite as gravings. It traces the history of the church scholarly but less microscopic than Ellicot, as from the creation of the world to the emancipawarm but more trust-worthy than Stanley, inore tion of slavery in the United States. Composed Christian and less churchly than Wordsworth, of materials originally gathered for theological Dean Alford possessed one qualification almost lectures, it partakes too much of the severe unknown among biblical commentators-that of style of such lectures to render it attractive to absolute independence; never squaring the Scrip- the general reader, but it is a convenient manture to his own views, but interpreting its mean-ual of ecclesiastical history to the student, and ing with a theological impartiality unparalleled, even when it compelled him to deny that apostolic succession was known to the apostolic church, and to declare that the church of Christ, unlike that of Judaism, should be dependent not upon the state, but upon the voluntary contributions of the people. Harper and Brothers republished several years ago one volume from his pen-that on the Gospels. We hope yet to see the work thus begun completed. We are sure that almost any clergyman could well afford to exchange half his library of sermons and doctrinal theology for Dean Alford's Commentary on the Greek Testament. RELIGION AND THEOLOGY. We took up Rev. J. H. BLUNT's Dictionary of Doctrinal and Historical Theology (J. B. Lippin affords a comprehensive view of the progress of religious truth and organizations for those who have not time or inclination to read more elaborate treatises on special eras.-All students of the evidences of Christianity are familiar with the argument from prophecy. Dr. R. PAYNE SMITH, in his Prophecy a Preparation for Christ (Gould and Lincoln), the Bampton lectures for 1869, has presented the argument in a new and very interesting form. His object is less to show the literal fulfillment of prophecyan argument the course of which can be appreciated only by those who possess some scholarship-than to exhibit the truth that "there is throughout the Old Testament a special presence of God preparing for the fulfillment of a gracious purpose on His part to restore man to a higher state of perfection and happiness than that from which he fell"-a course of argument which can be appreciated by any one who is able to enter into the spirit of the Bible.-Professor MURRAY'S Outline of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy (Gould and Lincoln) contains, in a compact form, the system of that philosopher, gathered from his various books, but as a text-book we think it inferior to Professor Havens's work, which is scarcely less Hamiltonian in philosophy. -Mr. J. T. HEADLEY, whose beautiful home on the banks of the Hudson ought to prove an inspiration, but does not, fails to keep up the promise of his earlier years. His Sacred Heroes and Martyrs (E. B. Treat and Co.) has something of the imaginative glow which made his "Sacred Mountains" so popular; but the general impression which it produces is that it contains a great deal of matter for a very limited amount of truth. -Dr. HUNT has evidently been inspired by the best of purposes in preparing his Bible Notes for Daily Readers (Scribner), but had not the learning to fit him for his task. His two large octavo volumes contain no evidence that he is acquainted with the results of recent scholarship in biblical fields. They leave the reader at the end as uninformed in respect to the problems of to-day as when he opened the book; nor do they contain any spiritual strength to compensate for the intellectual weakness, or any originality of thought to supply the lack of accurate and fresh knowledge. Though Dr. FURNESS in his Jesus (J. B. Lippincott and Co.) does not carry his readers as far as, with our conception of Christ's character, we could wish he did, yet, as a counterpoise to the works of such destructionists as Strauss, such skeptics as Schenckel, such romancers as Renan, and such extreme humanitarians as some of the followers of Theodore Parker, such a volume is the more useful because it is the work of a man who belongs ecclesiastically to the school whose extreme and destructive radicalism he seeks to temper. According to Dr. Furness, Jesus is the ideal man, whose mission it was to afford us a new sense "of the worth and sacred destiny of the race which has produced such an instance of what it may become." HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY. WE read with some impatience so calm and unimpassioned a narrative as Mr. G. Z. GRAY has afforded us in The Children's Crusade (Hurd and Houghton) of events so stirring as those which form the subject-matter of his narrative. In reading this story, gathered from sources which to most readers are inaccessible, of the cruel deceptions, the scandalous treacheries, the cold, unsympathizing repulses which the children suffered from Christians, worse than the slavery and martyrdom which some of them experienced at the hands of the Saracens, we long for some more vigorous utterance of feeling on the part of the writer. But this want of emotional and dramatic power is the only fault we have to find in a volume which is a valuable addition to the religious history of the Middle Ages. It is too early to write a history of the European war. JOHN S. C. ABBOTT'S Prussia and the Franco-Prussian War (B. B. Russell), so far as it is such a history, is necessarily composed from such materials as are furnished by official documents already published, and by the | accounts of the most reliable journals. Mr. Abbott has succeeded in bringing order out of this chaos, and has furnished the best account before the public of the course of the war up to December, 1870. In tracing its origin he is on surer historical ground. And the reader has here, in a compact and readable form, a succinct account of the rise of Prussia, the eccentricities of the Fredericks, the Schleswig-Holstein question, the unification of Italy, and the real though remote causes of the present war.-There is nothing about either the subject or the author to render The Destroyer of the Second Republic (Sheldon and Co.) a book of much interest or much value. What VICTOR HUGO has to say about Napoleon III. is a matter of the least possible concern to the American mind. As a history it is untrustworthy; as a piece of philosophy it is superseded by history; as an indictment it is melodramatic.-M. RENAN'S Constitutional Monarchy in France (Roberts Brothers), an essay translated from the Revue des Deux Mondes, is a much more sober and suggestive book-more thoughtful than often comes from French writers when they deal with political matters. Looking beneath the surface, he perceives in the empire the legitimate fruit of the revolution, and addresses alike to the imperialists and the radicals some words of caution, to which recent events give very remarkable significance. Nevertheless it is a book of purely local interest, scarcely worth reprinting in America.-Dr. CHARLES ADAMS, in the Memoir of Washington Irving (Carleton and Lanahan), presents, in a very convenient form, the story of the great writer's life for youthful readers. It is told in a style which will make it attractive to others also, who have not time to read the four volumes of Pierre M. Irving.-We have already expressed our strong approbation of the "Tone Masters" (Lee and Shepard). Two additional volumes of the series, Handel and Haydn and Bach and Beethoven, confirm the impressions produced by the preceding volume. FICTION. Ir can not be very difficult to write a novel on the principle on which Mrs. AUSTIN has written The Shadow of Moloch Mountain (Sheldon and Co.). We confess to have followed with some interest the adventures of Beatrice and Marston Brent, and that it is quite impossible for even an experienced novel-reader to guess from one chapter what the next will bring forth; but then it is not difficult to write a book of surprises, if one simply allows himself to pay no attention whatever to the laws which ordinarily regulate human conduct, and sets his characters to doing all manner of things, except those which are congruous and coherent. A bad vow is better broken than kept; and the absurd consistency which leads Marston to reject the retraction of Beatrice is happily never found except in the heroes of novels, and not very often, we are glad to think, even there.-Messrs. E. P. Dutton and Co. send us their first ventures in the realm of fiction, By the Sea, and Shiloh. The former was written, we judge, by a young, certainly by an immature, authoress. There are some manifestations of power, but the plot is too involved, the incidents too unnatural, to secure and maintain a healthy interest. The machinery of a French romance is not adapted to the necessities of a religious . story. "Shiloh" we like. It is all the better for being a growth, not a creation—that is, natural rather than elaborately artistic. While there are no scenes of great power, there are passages of quaint originality, and some of real pathos; and the moral, "As ye have opportunity do good unto all men," is very well enforced.-Christine Nilsson's recommendation will of itself insure to her countrywoman, Madame MARIE SCHWARTZE, a favorable hearing; and we think her volumes, so far as we can judge from the two before us, Gold and Name and Birth and Education (Lee and Shepard), will secure a favorable verdict. The novels, like their titles, are perhaps a little heavy, though how far that is due to a natural loss of vivacity in translation we can not say. But to those who are wearied with the sensational style we have borrowed from France, this specimen of a better and purer style of literature from Sweden will be very cordially welcomed. stories. SCIENCE. of the same inimitable love of the little folks, and the same broad, democratic sympathies.-Double Play (Lee and Shepard) is a very healthful book for boys-a book to develop genuine Christian manliness, and to weed out morbid feeling. The preface is a very ingenious bit of rather artificial humor.-It need only to be known that The Percys (A. D. F. Randolph and Co.) is by Mrs. PRENTISS to insure its reading by the little folks, and its hearty approval by their elders. If her people are a little too good to be natural, they are not too good to be healthful and inspiring examples. This book is an admirable help to any young person who, away from home, has begun to fight the Christian battle, and needs for it both inspiration and guidance.-Lee and Shepard send us, in Who will Win and Going on a Mission, two volumes of another of their attractive series for children. The first of these is unusually interesting, and contains some admirable touches of humor.-They also send us Arthur The commencement of Mr. ADOLPHUS TROL- Brown, the first of the Pleasant Cone series, by LOPE's last and, in some respects, strongest nov- ELIJAH KELLOGG. Full of adventures which el, A Siren (Harper and Brothers), does not do are intended to give the reader not only pleasjustice to its close. It opens with a wearisomely ure but instruction, this book will undoubtedly elaborate description of Italian life and nature, find a hearty welcome from the boys who have and moves so lazily, as a narrative, that the read-made the author's acquaintance in the Elm Island er will be inclined to abandon the novel before he has got fairly into it. But the author wakes up as he proceeds, before the story is ended it assumes an almost melodramatic intensity, and the brilliancy of the conclusion amply repays the reader who has the patience to push his way through the opening chapters. The mystery which hangs over the plot is managed with great effect, and until the very last chapter the reader is entirely led astray in respect to its solution.-Marcella of Rome (Dodd and Mead), by the authoress of Geoffrey the Lollard," is a somewhat highly but well wrought tale of the primitive Christian martyrs. The story does not depend for its value upon the accuracy with which it portrays Roman life, though some of its descriptions are very good; nor upon its dramatic interest, which, however, never flags; but upon the power with which it carries the reader into those olden times, and the success with which it unfolds Christian experience as tested by extraordinary trial. The authoress has opened a somewhat new vein in historical fiction, and one which promises to afford the three elements whose combination constitutes the perfection of a religious story-instruction, inspiration, and interest.-The Victory of the Vanquished (Dodd and Mead) is a similar story, treating not only of the same era, but even introducing some of the same incidents; but Mrs. CHARLES has not improved since she wrote that incomparable story, "The Schonberg - Cotta Family;" and this, her latest story, which is a very good one, suffers both by contrast with her earlier works and with that of her younger competitor. Christie Elwood (Robert Carter and Brothers) is too heavily weighted with formal religious instruction to be altogether successful as a story. It is seldom that we meet with any one not a professional author, or even with any one who is, who can tell a story as well as Mr. R. To readers unfamiliar with the German lanW. RAYMOND has told the seven stories for seven guage Goethe's Faust has hitherto been a "book days which constitute The Children's Week (J. with seven seals." Mr. BAYARD TAYLOR is the B. Ford and Co.)—an admirable little collection good magician who has broken the seals, and of fairy sketches, with touches here and there laid its treasures open to the English public. that remind us of Dickens, and with something His translation (J. R. Gsgood and Co.) is the WE gladly welcome a series of volumes, of which the first only is before us, by Mr. JACOB ABBOTT, the general character of which is aptly described in the title, Science for the Young (Harper and Brothers). Mr. Abbott, at his best, is the very best living writer for youth; and the volume before us, on heat, is executed in his best manner. It treats of the principles of combustion, of the correlation of forces, and the mechanical theory of heat. The information is brought down to the latest results of physical research, including the best exposition (for popular use) of the experiments of Mayer and Goule that we know of in the English language. The most recent discoveries are described with great lucidity, and illustrated with impressive and forcible examples. The work is clothed in a slightly dramatic form, which is calculated to win the attention of young readers without impairing the precision of its statements. The book opens with an account of a voyage to Liverpool in the Scotia, giving a series of interesting details in regard to the daily routine of sea life. The series can hardly fail to prove attractive to all classes of readers, old as well as young. Professor PROCTOR'S volume on Other Worlds than Ours (D. Appleton and Co.) is an interesting and well-written attempt to show the reasonableness of the hypothesis that the other worlds are inhabited. Incidentally it contains, in a form attractive to the general reader, a good deal of valuable information on astronomical science.Scribner and Co. add a volume on The Bottom of the Sea to their Wonder series. POETRY. simple can be so designated, of Islamism. The There are one or two additional pieces in the only one truly worthy of the name ever published. All the others, from Anster to Brooks, were sheer travesties in comparison, and-to borrow Macaulay's appropriation of Shakspeare's wit-deserve to be called translations only in the sense in which Quince addresses Bottom on his appearance with an ass's head on his shoulders, "Bless thee, Bottom, bless thee, thou art translated!" Had the test of retranslating them into German been applied to any one of them, Goethe would not have been able to recognize the most faint resemblance to his own immortal work. Mr. Taylor's translation comes as near being a perfect reproduction of the original as the difference in the two languages will permit; and it is the only one, out of a score or two, which an admirer of Goethe's genius can read with pleasure and approval. Its These are the only poetical works of importcharacteristics are fidelity to the form, thought, ance on our table. G. P. Putnam and Son send and spirit of the German poem, combined with us The Suitors, a translation, by IRVING BROWNE, the freedom and ease of original composition. from the French of Racine, whose play was itself In the plan of adhering to the original metres an adaptation of Aristophanes's "Wasps." The Mr. Taylor was anticipated by Mr. Brooks, who, translation appears to be well done; it is at least however, never hesitated to sacrifice every thing smooth and free from foreign idioms, and, as to rhyme and metre; whereas Mr. Taylor ad- there are a great many who like to laugh at the mits that if "now and then there was an in- lawyers when not in their hands, it ought, as a evitable alternative of meaning or music," he satire on the legal profession, to be popular. It gave the preference to the former; but he adds would make a very good play for parlor theatricthat in the progress of the work he was cheered als.-Mr. WISEMAN'S translation of Leonore (J. by the discovery that the more closely he repro- Kohler, Philadelphia) is not as good as some duced the language of the original, the more of others previously before the public.-Max and its rhythmical character was transferred at the Maurice (Boberts Brothers), from the German same time. Without binding himself to a rigid of WILLIAM BUSCH, is as entrancingly absurd a adherence to every foot, line, and rhyme of the piece of nonsense as we have ever met with.— original, which would have fettered him too close-We have two or three collections of poetry. Porly, he has taken fewer liberties with the text ter and Coates send us a new edition of LONGthan any of his predecessors; and those which FELLOW's Poets and Poetry of Europe. This he has taken are in every case unimportant, and book is of a different character from that of most in no wise affect the character of the translation. poetical collections. It is not a mere selection The superiority of his version is nowhere more for pleasant reading. Classified according to apparent than in the lyrical passages, especially countries and authors, and accompanied with very in the beautiful choruses in short lines, with dou- brief but discriminating biographical sketches of ble and triple rhymes, which have been the de- the writers, it is really a cyclopedia of European spair of all preceding translators. Every student poetry, an invaluable aid, and almost indispensof the German will be struck with the rhythmic-able book of reference to the student of literature. al ease and fluency which characterize these passages, and will appreciate the amount of labor it must have cost to conceal so effectually every trace of labor. We should like, did space permit, to quote some of these passages, and com pare them with the bungling efforts of previous translators. Such a comparison would show that, with the single exception of Shelley, Mr. Taylor is the only translator of "Faust" in whom are combined all the qualifications essential to the successful performance of the work. Himself a poet of high and rare imagination, and gifted with exceptional command over the resources of the English language, he entered upon the task with the determination to give us Goethe's "Faust" in English - -to take, as it were, the soul of the German poem, and create for it a new and living body as nearly a perfect copy of the original as another than the great artist himself could make of it. After twenty years of intelligent study and application, he has given us a work which will take rank as a master-piece of poetical translation. Miriam (J. R. Osgood, and Co.) is the title of a little volume of poems by J. G. WHITTIER, and is the first and most considerable piece in the volIt is a story, if any thing so exceedingly ume. -ANNA C. LOWELL'S Posies for Children (Roberts Brothers) is an exceedingly well-selected bouquet of verse for the little folks.-Lullaby (Randolph) is an exquisite little book, as beautiful in execution as it is pretty in conception. It is a collection of lullabies gathered from various sources-the English, the German, the Gaelic, the French, the Norse, all being laid under contribution, and all sorts of authors represented, from Mother Goose to Wordsworth and Tennyson. Music is added to most of them, so that the mother may readily adopt which of the lullabies she likes best for her own little one.-The larger collections of poetry are excluded from many homes by their expense, and from many hands in hours of weariness, when the ministration of poetry is most needed, by their bulk. But there are surely few who could not afford to grace their home by such a volume as Professor KENDRICK'S Our Poetical Favorites (Sheldon and Co.), and almost absolutely none who would be debarred from H. P. W.'s Poems of Home Life (American Tract Society). They are both exceedingly good collections. The latter shows in its compiler especially good taste as well as wide reading, and, more than all, a woman's perceptions of home life and home wants. HALFORD METHOD OF CURING SNAKE BITES. | directed one against the other at the back of the Professor Halford, in a recent communication, discusses the symptoms of twenty cases treated by his process, under the hands of different practitioners, widely remote from each other. In seventeen cases recovery followed; and in thirteen of these the practitioners were of the opinion that death would certainly have ensued without this counteracting agency. The treatment consists in injecting about three minims of dilute ammonia, of the specific gravity of .959, into a superficial vein, by piercing its coats with the nozzle of a hypodermic syringe. The curative effect is said to be almost immediate, and several physicians stated that the recovery from collapse was so rapid and startling as to be almost magical. It still remains a question, however, whether, notwithstanding Dr. Halford's assurances, the Australian snakes are really as venomous as those of America-the contrary being, it is understood, the opinion of Dr. Krefft, of Sydney. We await with much interest the result of renewed experiments in this country, and can only express the hope that the application may be successful in cases of bites of rattlesnakes and copper-heads; since in the latest memoir on the venom of the rattlesnake, by Dr. Mitchell, of Philadelphia, he expresses the opinion positively that no remedy exists in cases where the poison is mature, and has been fairly introduced into the circulation in sufficient quantity. COMBUSTION OF SMOKE. It is generally understood that the cause of smoke, in the case of burning wood and other forms of carbon, is due essentially to an insufficient supply of air, which prevents the combustion from being complete. This may seem strange, when we are assured that the gases produced by combustion, of coal especially, contain an excess of air. This apparent inconsistency, however, is explained when we are informed that by a deficiency of air is simply meant that this is the case in each volume or stratum of air in which combustion has taken place; but the gases which pass into the chimney may be regarded as a collection of such volumes or strata mixed with others rich in oxygen, and these, in most instances, being too little heated to admit of their entering into combination. furnaces, the strata are thus broken up and mixed, so as greatly to diminish the amount of smoke. Another application, for the same purpose, consists in introducing a little air, in a finely divided state, behind the bridge of the furnace. This air supplies the requisite oxygen at the moment when the combustible gases are still sufficiently heated for them to become ignited; and the admixture is readily effected, but with some loss of combustible matter. Still a third process, that of Thierry, consists in introducing a jet of steam over the surface of the fire. The steam does not exert any chemical action, but operates mechanically by mixing gases, and thus diminishing the amount of smoke. By means of these, and other applications that will readily suggest themselves, much may be done not only in preventing the escape of smoke from furnaces, locomotives, and hearths, but also in economizing the fuel by securing an appreciably greater intensity and amount of heat. HYPODERMIC INJECTIONS. A committee appointed by the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society of London to investigate the hypodermic method of administering medicine reports as follows: 1. That, as a general rule, only clear neutral solutions of drugs should be injected. 2. That, whether drugs be injected under the skin, or administered by the mouth or rectum, their chief physiological and therapeutical effects are the same in kind, though varying in degree; but, 3. That symptoms are observed to follow the subcutaneous injection of some drugs which are absent when they are administered by other methods; and, on the other hand, certain unpleasant symptoms which are apt to follow the introduction of the drugs by the mouth and rectum are not usually experienced when such drugs are injected under the skin. 4. That, as a general rule, to which, however, there are many exceptions, neutral solutions of drugs, introduced subcutaneously, are more rapidly absorbed and more intense in their effects than when introduced by the rectum or mouth. 5. That no difference has been observed in the effects of a drug subcutaneously injected, whether it be introduced near to or at a distance from the part affected. 6. That the advantages to be derived from this method of introducing drugs are-rapidity of action, intensity of effect, economy of material, certainty of action, facility of introduction in certain cases, and, with some drugs, avoidance of unpleasant symptoms. It is further stated that "we may safely take From these theoretical considerations it follows as a broad guide in practice the rule, that the that, for the purpose of avoiding or diminishing physiological activity of nearly every substance smoke, it will be sufficient to cause an intimate which can thus be used is three if not four admixture of the gases the moment they quit times greater when it is given by the skin than the fire, even without introducing a fresh volume when it is swallowed." The proper hypodermic of air. This principle has been applied in sev- dose of strychnine, to begin with, is said to be eral forms. In one, two fire-places are built grain of the sulphate. The dose of atropine side by side, running parallel, and separated by is also grain at first. The dose of morphine a wall. The fires in these two fire-places are is grain to grain. fed alternately, and the currents of gas being The circumstance that the action of medi VOL. XLII.-No. 250.-40 |