13 JANUARY 1866, Page 21

The Last Warning Cry. By Rev. John Cumming, D.D. (Nisbet.)—

In the words of Horace, slightly adapted, "Tenacious of his prophecies,

And just except the Pope he spies, The valorous doctor will not quit, For all the wicked London wit ; For angry Spurgeon's threat'ning tone, Spurgeon, 'too fond to rule alone,' That fixed resolve, by which he's given The world to wrack in Sixty-seven."

This is the substance of Dr. Cumming's present volume, which he dedi- cates to Her Grace the Duchess of Sutherland, Countess of Cromartie, finding, we suppose, a melancholy satisfaction in dwelling upon the titles that are so soon to lose their importance. By the bye, if Her Grace shares the doctor's views, how came she to go to the expense the other day of taking out the Cromartie patent, with limitation to her second son? This would seem strange, unless we are to gather from a curious conjecture at the end of the, work that there is to be no change in the essence of things in the millennial period that is approaching. " What underlies," Dr. Cumming asks, in an oddly expressed sentence, "that vast network of railways that has overspread England, Europe, and has entered Italy, long the land of obscurantism? . . . Is it indefinite chance, &c. ? I believe not. . . . The rails are being laid down for yet more glorious chariot-wheels ; the ocean steamer is being prepared for the transit of a yet nobler freight." We dare not pursue the train of thought ; sunt certi denique fines.