CURRENT LITERATURE.
The North British Review. February, 1863. (Edinburgh : Clark.)— The current number of what is, in fact, the real "Edinburgh Review," can scarcely be regarded as of more than average merit. It opens with an article on " Convicts and Transportation," the writer of which con- demns the English penal system, and denounces the suggestion of a ieturn to transportation as at once immoral and impracticable. The remedy which he proposes is the substitution of what he calls labour aeanaces for sentences for fixed terms of years. For example, he would eandamn a garotter, not to five years' penal servitude, but to remain in prison until he had earned auertain sum—say £250-40 of which
might bo paid to him in instalments after his release. There is a good deal to be said for the plan. The article is not well written, and con- tains one flagrant piece of bad taste, in the introduction of a joke which, though certainly good, is very old, and scarcely decent. " Recent attacks on the Pentateuch" give occasion for a temperately written notice of Bishop Colenso's book, as well as of a much more aggressive work by Dr. Davidson, a gentleman whose opinions have cost him his professorship at the Lancashire Independent College. The only other article which calls for special mention is a rather sketchy, though, on the whole, judicious paper on "Novels and Novelists of the Day."
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