11 SEPTEMBER 1897, Page 22

Spanish Protestants in the Sixteenth Century. Compiled from the German

of C. A. Wilkens, Doctor of Theology and Philosophy, by Rachel Challice. With an Introduction by the late most Reverend Lord Plunket, D.D., Archbishop of Dublin, and Preface by the Rev. Canon Fleming, B.D. (W. Heinemann.)— The introduction to this volume by the late Archbishop of Dublin is to be commended for brevity, but most readers interested in the progress of Protestantism in Spain would prefer a fuller account from Dr. Plunket's pen to the recommendation of another work on the point of publication. Miss Challice states that the task of translating Dr. Wilkens's " Geschichte des Spanischen Protestantismus" occupied her two years, that the work being then considered too ponderous for general readers-she has, with the author's consent, reduced the book to half the original size ; yet a work consisting of two hundred and fifty-nine pages, with about three hundred words in a page, cannot justly be called ponderous, though it must be admitted that the absence of paragraphs and the want of an index and table of contents give to Dr. Wilkens's volume a very clumsy appearance. We cannot agree with Miss Challice that his materials are chiefly drawn from Spanish, Italian, and German writers, for he is largely indebted to English and American authors, and constantly acknowledges the obligation. The translator's volume has much to commend it to the general reader. The most interesting portions of the work are recast in chapters, and the table of contents makes the narrative easy to follow. We do not know why certain well-known names—(Ecolampadius and Melauchthon, for example—are invariably misspelt.