28 JUNE 1879, Page 24

(Murray.)—The third volume is entitled "Historical and Speculative," the earliest

essay it contains being on "The Theses of Erastus and the Scottish Establishment," and the latest, "The Sixteenth Century

Arraigned before the Nineteenth," reprinted from the Contemporary Review, October, 1878. Of the contents of the fourth volume, which bears the description of "Foreign," the most noticeable are the letters on Neapolitan prisons, written during the years 1851-3. Perhaps it might be salutary, for some who are not satisfied with the Italy of to-day, to refresh (if such a word may be used in such a matter) their minds by reading these letters. To see what monstrous wickedness, civil and ecclesiastical powers, working harmoniously together, king and priests, with everything at their disposal, could desccnd to, may reconcile the more candid to a Liberal Bing and an imprisoned Pope. Volumes V. and VI. are devoted to things eccle- siastical, the former representing an early period, with essays on "The Present Aspect of the Church, 1843," "Ward's Ideal of a Christian Church, 1844," and "Remarks on the Royal Supremacy, 1850 ;" the second, containing five essays, of which the latest, "Italy and her Church," belongs to the year 1875.—Lays of Ind, by Aleph Cheem (Thacker and Spink, Calcutta ; Thacker and Co., London), appears in a "sixth edition, enlarged." It was quite worth while to to give the public some more of these very amusing verses.—A one- volume edition of Mr. Robert Buchanan's romance the Shadow of the Sword appears in Mr. Strahan's "Books for the People."—We have also to acknowledge Taylor's Holy Dying, edited, with introduc- tion and notes, by the Rev. F. C. Makeson, M.A. (Ward and Lock) ; and a new edition of the Office of the Holy Spirit, by Duncan Clark, M.D. (Haughton) ; Our Scotch Banks : a Practical Plea for Limited Liability, by William Mitchell (Edinburgh, David Douglas) ; Rogees Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases, an improved and enlarged edition, edited, partly from the author's notes, and with an entirely new index, by J. L. Roget (Longmans, Green, and Co.)