poetical possibility of such an existence does not appear on the face of this drama, which therefore does not excite that purifying terror and pity which are the vocation of the tragic drama. Monastic charity and education are well portrayed in the following passages, which we give as specimens of the author's style.

"I tell you, Monk, if she were not healthier by God's making than ever she will be by yours, her charity would be by this time double-distilled selfishness -the mouths she fed, cupboards to store good works in-the backs she warmed, clothes-horses to hang out her wares before God; her alms not given, but fairly paid, a halfpenny for every halfpenny-worth of eternal life; earth her chessboard, and the men and women on it merely pawns for her to play a winning game-puppets and horn-books to teach her unit holiness-a private work-shop in which to work out her own salvation. Out upon such charity!"-Act iv. Sc. 2.

"I thought the task of education was

To strengthen, not to crush; to train and feed
Each subject towards fulfilment of its nature,
According to the mind of God, revealed

In laws, congenital with every kind

And character of man."

Mr. Kingsley was one of the pupils of the Chelsea Training School, established by the National Society for raising up a body of preceptors for the Church. Throughout the drama there are indications of liberality beyond, we should think, the ordinary class of the orthodox Dissenting schoolmasters.

The Self-sacrificing Zeal of our pious Forefathers, and the Duty of Unitarians to be Faithful to the Trust they have bequeathed: a Discourse on occasion of the Death of the Rev. William Hughes, of Widcombe, preached December 10th, 1848, at Newport, Isle of Wight. By Edmund Kell, M. A. London

-Mardon.

sure.

In the execution of our duty as critics, we always meet Mr. Kell with pleaHe writes like a man thoroughly in earnest, with no half-convictions, and with no disposition to avoid an encounter with an error in opinion or a fault in practice. In preaching the funeral sermon of the late Mr. Hughes (whose character has been recently described in our pages by another friend), Mr. Kell had a very congenial subject, and the result is a very animated and interesting discourse. In addition to some valuable biographical details, the preacher gives us a brief review of the state of religion at the commencement and the close of Mr. Hughes's career. We select a few facts and a short passage or two.

Mr. Hughes was a descendant of Stephen Hughes, the ejected minister of Mydrym, in Carmarthenshire, whose services to religion and the religious literature of Wales are held in reverential recollection and tradition by his countrymen, who still point to a spot which bears the name of "Stephen Hughes's pulpit." The father of Mr. Hughes was David Hughes, the Presbyterian minister of Wincanton. In preparation for the ministry, he entered Coward's Academy at Hoxton in 1778. His elder brother John, afterwards minister at Tewkesbury and Honiton, had entered the same Academy in 1775. Amongst their contemporaries at Hoxton were Mr. W. D. Cooper, of Gorton, Mr. Tremlett, and Messrs. Smith, of Selby, and Hort of Cork.

Mr. Kell gives in a note some particulars respecting Dr. Savage.

"Of his theological tutor, Dr. Savage, who was an intimate friend of Dr. Watts, and one of his successors at Berry-Street meeting, Mr. Hughes was wont to relate that 'he trembled with indignation' when he spoke of the destruction of the lost papers of this distinguished divine. Of the three executors of Dr. Watts, Mr. Neal, himself a Unitarian, appears to have left the MSS. to the discretion of the other two. Dr. Doddridge is considered to have been desirous that they should see the light, and to him is ascribed the merit of having rescued

the Solemn Address to the Deity.' To Dr. David Jennings the writings were submitted, and, in Mr. Hughes's words, they were never seen nor heard of afterwards.' Dr. Savage, as both the colleague and successor of Dr. Jennings in Coward's Academy, may be supposed to have been well qualified to form a just estimate of this transaction. Mr. Hughes always expressed great respect for the learning and candour of Dr. Savage. He was in the habit, as tutor, of employing Dr. Doddridge's lectures for his text-book, adding other references when required; and although strictly orthodox, his constant advice to the students was, 'Judge for yourselves.'

During his ministry at Sidmouth and Leather Lane, Mr. W. Hughes was an Arian.

"But after the commencement of the controversial lectures, supported in Portsmouth and its vicinity by the Southern Unitarian Fund Society, in 1816, being led more thoroughly to examine the subject, he gave up his belief in the pre-existence of Christ. It was in these series of week-night lectures, carried on through successive winters, in conjunction with his brother ministers of Chichester and Newport, that his zeal in the diffusion of the genuine doctrines of the gospel was more peculiarly evinced. For nearly ten years, no consideration of other avocations, no inclemency of weather for crossing the water, ever deterred him from being at his appointed post; and many there are who still remember the interest his earnest and energetic appeals in behalf of scripture truth awakened."

Mr. Kell weaves into his sermon two effective anecdotes. One is, that Dr. Parr once said to an Unitarian minister, "You must succeed, for you have the Book with you." The other records an opinion respecting Unitarians of the late Rev. Daniel Gunn, an eminent Independent minister of Christchurch, Hants: speaking to an Unitarian, he said, "It is not your principles that are so much against your progress, as that your practice is not in conformity to your principles." The concession of Dr. Parr, equally with the rebuke of Mr. Gunn, may suggest to all of us important reflections.

First Steps to Zoology. By R. Patterson. London-Simms and M'Intyre. OF Mr. Patterson's former works on Zoology, we have expressed a favourable opinion. The attractive little book now before us possesses most of their good qualities, but is adapted for more juvenile readers. It abounds with interesting anecdotes, and is illustrated with 244 very well-executed wood-cuts. We select a passage descriptive of the Teredo.

"It is occasionally the pleasing duty of the naturalist to direct attention to some of the many examples where there springs from partial evil, universal good; and perhaps the Teredo, notwithstanding the evidence of its destructive powers, might, if the whole truth were known, be ranked among the number of our benefactors. Mr. R. Ball has remarked, that, but for the maligned Teredo, the sea would be so covered with floating logs of timber, as to be to some extent unnavigable; that the rivers of warm latitudes would be choked up by the accumulated driftwood at their mouths; and that their fertile banks would, in many cases, be converted into morasses.'

"On one occasion, during a stroll along the beach, the waves flung upon the shore a piece of the painted wood-work of some unfortunate vessel. On examining it, I found it was pierced throughout by the Teredo, and that the animals were still living in the galleries they had excavated, and which were lined with shelly matter throughout all their windings. While each animal had used with effect the curious auger-shaped instrument by which the perforations were made, no one had interfered with the progress of his fellows; and almost in every instance, when the borings approached too close, their direction had been changed, and contact or interference thus avoided. That piece of drift timber, the sport of winds and waves, contained within itself a little world of animated existence!"-P. 112.

The Garland of Gratitude. By Joseph Dare. London-Chapman.

MR. DARE is favourably known, to some at least of our readers, as an intelligent Domestic Missionary at Leicester. This little volume of poems will not diminish their respect for him. It shews him possessed of taste and poetical susceptibility, as well as very amiable feelings. We subjoin one or two of the shorter poems.

"TWILIGHT.

"How many thousands at this blessed hour

Are looking forth upon the lingering west,
From peopled town, lone cot, and ancient tower,
T'enjoy, like me, its loveliness and rest!

And 'tis a thought that makes me truly blest,
That unto all the glorious scene is given-

That the green earth, cool air, and deep blue heaven
Impart a common joy, a common zest.

There is no breeze upon the stirless tree,
Shining in glory of the sunset ray;

The small grey gnats are dancing merrily;
With clustered speedwell all the path is gay;

And such a gentle spirit fills the air,

'Tis as the world itself were kneeling down in prayer."
"COMPOSED WHILE GETTING BABY TO SLEEP.
"How gently sleep comes on thee, baby mine!
With stilly murmurings, like as bees repine;
Upon my bosom thou hast made thy bed,
As conscious that a father guards thy head;
One little gape, one gentle, long-drawn breath-
Gentle as fragrance breathed from flowers-and then
Thy blue eyes close, then half unfold again;
And now they swim away in sleep's soft death,
Hidden, like violets, underneath their leaves;
Thy limbs are quiet now, thy breast scarce heaves.
I look upon thee till I deeply sigh,

And memory's blinding tears suffuse mine eye;

For, looking thus, I think upon the tomb

Where my first-born, thy sisters, sleep-and dread thy doom."

"ON VISITING THE EXHIBITION FOR THE MECHANICS' INSTITUTION, LEICESTER. "Not for these works of nature or of art,

I linger with delight-though wondrous all,—
Nor for those mingled strains, poured o'er the heart
In swelling floods, like music's waterfall;
But here I linger, held by some sweet thrall,
More potent than the spell of wizard's hall,
To muse upon the sports of by-gone years;
The strength of thews, the fight, and blood and tears
Of the crushed slave; the wild beasts' dying howl;
And men with brutes contending, fierce and foul :-
These were the sports of polished Greece and Rome,
And of my country. Fairer times are come;
Men, now grown men, with art and science play,
And seek in scenes like these their holiday."

The First Book for Sunday-Schools. New Series. By William Vidler. John Chapman, London; John Wood, Manchester.

THE Sunday-School Association have just published a New Series of the "First Book." Great care appears to have been taken to render the lessons suitable to the age of the children for whom it is intended; the information conveyed concerning objects and animals is well selected, as being the most

likely to interest and instruct, and is very correctly given; and the moral teaching is not obtrusive, but of a sound and wholesome nature. It has been very neatly got up, and it has been thought desirable to allow the first portion of the book, which contains the rudiments, and which the very young children by whom it would be used would probably soon deface, to be obtained separately.

Lectures on the Development of Religious Life in the Modern Christian Church. Part II., Zwingle and Calvin. By Henry Solly. 12mo. Pp. 48. London-C. E. Mudie.

MR. SOLLY well maintains in this Part the characteristic excellences of the first. His subjects are fine, and he treats them with great breadth and in a very earnest spirit. His taste is not always perfect, and he is sometimes seduced by local grievances (and what lover of religious freedom would not feel his spirit stirred within him at Cheltenham, that noted stage for clerical bigotry and fanaticism ?) to admit topics somewhat beneath the dignity of his general subject, and to pursue them with undesirable vehemence. The following passage, in reference to the persecution of which Zwingle was guilty, and in rebuke of modern persecution, is a specimen of the good and bad qualities of Mr. Solly's style:

*

"Ulric Zwingle, prophet like, moved on his noble course for many years, seeing his work clearly, doing it bravely, with calm strength and frequent joy. But at length he turned aside from his true mission, sunk the prophet in the statesman, and entered on that fatal course of armed coercion by which he thought to compel the mountain cantons to abandon their errors and embrace the gospel in its purity. Some of his political conceptions were magnificent, and many of his measures wise. But his memory can never be fully cleared from the condemnation of having promoted, if he did not originate, the cruel blockade of the mountain cantons, by which the Protestant Swiss sought to starve their Roman Catholic countrymen into the adoption of a purer Christianity. It was a great sin, and bitterly he suffered for it. Yet how many who would cast a stone at him, for having had recourse to a measure not less conspicuous for its absurdity than its criminality, practise the same system themselves! Not on the same scale, not with the imposing array of troops and sentinels which drew their iron wall round the hapless Waldstettes,—but in the pitiful, sneaking fashion of modern bigots, who, creeping from house to house, whisper in the ear of the heretic tradesman's customers that him (he whom) they deal with is a Dissenter,' or 'a Socinian;' who, as they succeed in shocking those customers' prejudices, and turning their steps from the tabooed counter, rejoice to see the heretic's business decline, and thank God if they behold a chance of starving him into 'Gospel truth.' Take them, take them all, ye followers of the Nazarene ? No! of the Sanhedrim who crucified him. Take those whom ye can outwardly convert by such foul measures, and they shall be a mill-stone round your necks when you would rise to heaven; in their miserable baseness they shall be your church companions for many a day; their leprosy shall cleave to you and to your seed; cowards and hypocrites shall minister to you in holy things; and as ye have wrought the darkest sacrilege in violating the sanctuary of religion in your brother's soul, so the temple of your own worship shall long be mournfully desecrated by the presence of priests without faith, and worshipers without holiness,-outwardly fair, full within of dead men's bones and all uncleanness.""-Pp. 72, 73.

Mr. Solly's lecture on John Calvin is full of striking thoughts, and is written in much better taste than the passage just quoted. We extract one of the concluding paragraphs:

"We must reverence Calvin for his earnestness, indefatigable zeal, indomitable steadfastness, for his purity, and above all, for his piety. We can forgive him his bigotry, his ceaseless stirring up of strife, his bitter persecutions of those who taught what he believed to be soul-destroying error. Nay, we can pardon him the remorseless cruelty, the almost savage animosity, with which he pursued to a terrible death

the learned, amiable and pious Servetus,-even as we forgive Saul of Tarsus for the martyrdom of Stephen, for all this was the natural, almost the only, course that could be followed by a man thoroughly in earnest, devoutly holding such a creed as Calvin's in such an age. These were the sins of his age, of his zeal, of his faith. But we cannot be reconciled to him as a theologian for so cruelly crushing man's affections, for so fatally undermining the great foundations of morality, of justice, of right, for so utterly breaking up all reverence for the noblest work of God-the soul of man."-Pp. 97, 98.

Chart of Ancient History. Compiled by T. E. Poynting.

THE educational works which are being constantly offered to the public, may be divided into two classes,--the one consisting of those which owe their origin to the desire of carrying out some particular theory of intellectual culture, or spring from the conviction that there is a want, rather than from any clear idea how to supply it; the other comprising those works which grow up spontaneously under the hands of those engaged in tuition, and being found by them useful in practice, are ultimately extended in their application to a wider circle of learners. To this latter class, much the more valuable class of the two, belongs the Chart of Ancient History. Its author, an experienced and successful teacher, finding the want of some improved method of giving interest to the study of Ancient History, and of impressing its facts on the minds of his pupils, devised the plan here carried out, and after having tested the method he recommends by an extended trial, he has printed it—primarily with a view to his own pupils, but in such a form that it may have a wider circulation, and may be used by any one with considerable advantage. This origin of the work would prepare us to find in it a practical adaptation to the wants of the learner.

The object aimed at by the Chart is "to direct the reflection to the spirit of History" by a chronological analysis of important events, and "to assist the memory." The means by which this is done is the "exhibiting the progressive development of successive, and the parallelism of contemporaneous events." For this purpose a large sheet of paper is divided into four columns, one of which is assigned to the Hebrew History, one to the Egyptian, one to the Grecian, and one to the Roman. The sheet is further divided, by lines running from side to side, into 20 divisions, each representing a century, and thus are shewn at a glance the contemporaneous events in each of the four great nations, in every century, from 2000 A. C. up to the Christian era. The great peculiarity of the plan consists in the ingenious manner in which the phraseology is made to serve the purpose of a memoria technica, simply by connecting together the events of successive centuries in a continuous chain, the links of which are kept quite distinct, but are yet so connected that when the learner gets hold of one, it will draw all the others after it. The contemporaneous events are made mutually suggestive in a similar manner, the method of printing drawing attention to those particulars in which there is sufficient resemblance, real or imaginary, to cause an association of the ideas, and to connect the events in the memory. In the exhibition of this parallelism Mr. Poynting has been, on the whole, successful, though the points of resemblance sometimes appear strained, as when we are told, 1300 A. C., "Gideon the Great conquers many nations of Midian." "Sesostris the Great conquers "Hercules the Great conquers 12 labours."

many nations."

It is difficult to give any clear idea of such a work as this by description; it will be more satisfactory, for those who know the difficulty of giving children correct general ideas of Ancient History, as a whole, with the main outlines of Chronology, to examine it for themselves. We think there are many who will consider it an acquisition, and who will find it a valuable help in their labours for the benefit of the rising generation.