30 JANUARY 1897, Page 39

Kalendar of the English Church, 1997. (Church Printing Com- pany.)—This

book certainly is in some respects what it professes to be. But it is also something different. It seems to be the deliberate revival of much that was deliberately dropped when the ritual of the English Church was settled. What are "simples with rulers," "simples of the third class," and" greater doubles"? We are reminded of a certain passage in the preface to the Prayer. book, where "the number and hardness" of certain rules is strongly censured. Is it lawful for the clergyman to use "with the assent of the ordinary" the Epistles and Gospels from the Sarum Use ? Does this accord with his declaration that he will use the service of the Prayer-book and none other ?

In the "new issue" of "Stanford's Compendium of Geography and Travel" (Edward Stanford), we have Asia. Vol II., by A. H. Keane. This second volume contains tho accpunt of Southern and Western Asia. Southern Asia is dealt with in three chapters, relating respectively to Afghanistan and Baluchistan, the Indian Empire, and Indo-China and Malacca ; to Western Asia five chapters are assigned, Asia Minor, Euphrates and Tigris Basin, Syria and Palestine, Arabia, and Persia.

We have received Part VI. of English Kinstrelsie, edited by S. Baring-Gould (T. C. and E. C. Jack, Edinburgh). The most famous songs in this instalment are "I Dreamt that I Dwelt in Marble Halls" and "Gather ye Rosebuds while ye may." — In the quarterly part of the New English Dictionary, edited by Dr. J. A. Murray (Clarendon Press), we have thirteen hundred and sixty-eight words. It is occupied with words in "die," among which almost the solitary word belonging to Old English is "distaff."