PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

Frons January 234 to January 2915. BOOKS.

Memoirs-and Correspondence of the Most Noble Richard Marquess Wel- lesley, K.P., K.G., D.C.L., successively Governor-General and Captain- General of India, British Ambassador in Spain, Secretary. of State for Foreign Affairs, and Lord.-Lieutenant of Ireland. Comprising numerous Letters and Documents, now first published from original MSS. By Ro- bert Rouiere Pearce, Esq. In three volumes.

Voyages of Discovery and Research within the Arctic Regions, from the year 1818 to the present time, under the command of the several Naval

Officers employed by sea and land in search of a North-west Passage

from the Atlantic to the Pacific; with two attempts to reach the North Pole. Abridged and arranged from the Official Narratives, with occa- sional Remarks, by Sir John Barrow, Bart., F.R.S., an. mt. 82; Author of " A Chronological History of Voyages into the Arctic Regions." With Portrait and Maps.

[It is just possible that we may return to this volume; but as many things inci- dental to Parliament and Publications may prevent it, we will say at once, that

the object of Sir John Barrow is to present the general reader with the popular matter contained in the narratives of the various expeditions to the North Pole since 1818, when public attention was revived towards the Arctic regions by the

attempts of Ross and Buchan. The voyages of these two officers are followed by

those of Parry, Lyon and Clavering, with Sabine's observations, as well as by the land jourmes of Franklin, Richardson' and Back; the last voyage of Ross and the

discoveries of Simpson being included in an appendix. It is needless to say of so able a geographer and so practised a writer as Sir John Barrow, that the narra- tives are skilfully abridged; the geographical questions lucidly condensed; the topics of interest, whether nautical or descriptive of nature and life in those icy re- gions, presented in the original language of the writers. Besides the advantage of having the pith and results of so many dear and bulky quartos presented in a

single octavo, the reader is also helped to conclusions by the commentary of Sir John; though there is in his notices of "Commander John Ross" a touch of more than critical acerbity. The volume is illustrated by a good map of the Arctic regions, and a chart of Simpson's discoveries.]

Modern Hagiology: an Examination of the Nature and Tendency of some Le- gendary and Devotional Works lately published under the sanction of the Reverend J. H. Newman, the Reverend Dr. Pusey, and the Reverend F. Oakeley. By the Reverend J. C. Crosthwaite, MA., Rector of St. Mary- at-Hill, and St. Andrew Hubbard, London. In two volumes. [These volumes are a collection of notices of Mr. Newman's Lives oft/es English Saints, which originally appeared in the British Magazine. The experiment of reprinting periodical reviews is rarely successful, from the necessarily technical character that pervades them; but this difficulty is escaped in Modern Ha • - logy by Mr. Crosthwaite having handled topicawhich the lives contain, rather than criticised the biographies or given an account of the particular books. The notices, therefore, assume the character of commentary upon the entire subject of Anglo- Saxon religious legend with the Tractarian views upon it; and although a part of

the author's argumentative warnings have been confirmed so as to be rendered needless by the accession to Rome of Mr. Newman and his followers, yet the book will be found an able and readable account of a subject singular alike for the ignorant credulity that produced and the fanatical credulity that exhumed it. Strange, that whilst a regular champion of the Church of Rome, like Dr. Lin was passing a philosophic judgment on these legends, an official of OxfordUni- versity should be publishing the most idle and indeed impossible of the tales as manuals for the modern generation.] Epository Discourses on the Rod of Moses; with other Sermons. By the Reverend Berkeley Addison, MA., of Peter's College, Cambridge, Assistant Minister of St. John's Episcopal Chapel, Edinburgh. [This volume forms pert of a series of discourses on the subject of Moses, deli- vered at one of the Episcopal chapels in Edinburgh. The first series appears to

have related to the miracles connected with the ark, as the sermons before US refer to the rod of Moses; Mr. Addison holding that the rod was the instrument of miraculous power till it was superseded by the ark. The logical consequence of this view we have not altogether caught; and perhaps these kind of interpreta-

tions verge too mach upon the mystical or mysterious to be very satisfactory.. The theory., however, is not a main feature of the sermons; which are occupied with the life and miracles of Moses, the moral conclusions to be deduced from them, and their relation to the Christian dispensation. The discourses exhibit ability and power; but more of a professional than of an original cast.] The Horse, in Health and Disease; or Suggestions on his natural and general History, varieties, conformation, paces, action, age, soundness, stabling, condition, training, and shoeing; with a Digest of Veterinary Practice. By James W. Winter, Member of the Royal College of Veterinary Sur geons, and of the Association Literaire d'Egypte; late Veterinary Surgeon to Mehemet All and Ibrahim Pasha.

[This volume is rather addressed to the veterinary surgeon and the horse-keeper than to the reading public; for though many curious facts of a general character are contained in its pages, yet the scope and topics of The Horse in Health and

Disease is professional, or at least practical. The chapters on breeding and conformation arc only of direct utility to the breeder; as those on veterinary

jurisprudence shoeing, diseases, operations, and medical treatment, are limited to the veterinary surgeon,—unless the lawyer should take a look at the first-named topic: but stable economy, paces, action, draught, safety, and speed, may be ad- vantageously consulted by every one who has anything to do with horse-flesh. It is curious that, in a state of nature, when feeding upon the scanty grasses of the wilderness the horse is often compelled to graze twenty hours out of the

twenty-four a support himself properly. In a savage state, life is entirely spent in endeavours to support it. It IS only with civilization that work and its com- forts begin. Another fact may be quoted for its practical importance. "Some of our cavalry stables are a disgrace as well as a loss to the country. At the die- tate of the commanding officer, who possibly likes to see the horses comfortable,

they are kept constantly bedded up to their knees: the result is that there is scarcely a horse fit for actual service in the regiment. If attempts were made purposely to produce disease of the extremities, none could be found more de- structively efficient than this baneful practice]

Palestrina; a Metrical Romance. By Robert M. Heron, Esq. [The object of this poem is to present the impressions which a late tour in Italy has made upon the author's mind: but it is only in the opening and some scattered passages of description that any such purpose is to be traced; and though the ideas and imagery seem evidently taken from nature, they are exhibited in too loose and indistinct a style to please or satisfy the reader. The bulk of the poem consists of a series of tales told by various persons to amuse Palestrina, who is anxiously waiting the return of her father from a foray. The scene is supposed to be laid in the early part of the middle ages; but there is no mark of time in the stories, or much adaptation of character or subject to correspond with the teller. They belong not to the actual world, but to the shelves of the bookseller's shop. The prototype of Mr. Heron's manner is the ever-recurring Byron.] The London Medical Directory, 1846. Containing the name, address,

qualification, official appointments, honorary distinctions, and literary pro- ductions of every Physician, Surgeon, and General Practitioner resident in London and its immediate vicinity; with a great variety of useful Medical Information.

[The London Medical Directory has grown greatly since last year. Besides ad- ditions and improvements in the list of names, including the omission of all per- sons who have not a recognized medical qualification, there are various new classes of information introduced: an obituary of the principal practitioners who have died in 1845, a catalogue of medical books published during the same period as well foreign as English, and a mass of information connected with the English medical corporations and schools, as well as the public departments. It is a useful if not an indispensable companion for the medical man's table.] Euclid's Elements of Geometry, chiefly from the Text of Dr. Simson, with

Explanatory Notes; together with a Selection of Geometrical Exercises from the Senate-House and College Examination Papers; to which is prefixed an Introduction, containing a brief Outline of the History of Geometry. Designed for the use of the higher forms in Public Schools and students in the Universities. By Robert Potts, M.A., Trinity Col- lege.

[The plan of this work is excellent. Even better than the admirable work of May- fair, Simson's Euclid is adapted to initiate the student into the true spirit of classi- cal geometry. It is not undervaluing the modem analysis to say, that familiarity with the Greek mode of demonstration is required to counteract its tendency to render mathematical demonstration entirely symbolical—to make the mind sub- ject to the format it ought to command. An introductory historical sketch has been made a feature of an elementary manual of geometry for the first time (so far as we know) by Mr. Potts. Something of the kind was required to impress upon young minds the fall importance of the science, and at the same time the limits within which it can be beneficially applied to the investigation of truth.] A Guide through the Town of Shrewsbury; interspersed with brief notices

of the more remarkable objects in the environs, and illustrated with en- gravings on wood. Second edition. [A neat useful little book, with a great many homely wood-cuts, illustrating the noticeable objects in the old town of Shrewsbury; with an appendix of its emi- nent persons, and the birds and plants of the vicinity.] SERIALS.

The Civil Wars of Rome: Select Lives translated from Plutarch, with Notes. By George Long. [-Except such reprints as Lord Brougham's "Statesmen of the Reign of George the Third," and Davis's "Chinese," this is, to our liki o, by far the most in- teresting work of the Weekly Volume for the People. The subject—the Civil Wars of Rome—is one of the most important events that can engage the attention of the historical student; and if it cannot be studied so profoundly as in a wider range of works, it can nowhere be read so pleasantly as in the biographies of Plutarch. Mr. Long's Notest too, in some sense supply this want of completeness, by the information they furnish and the light they throw upon some of the neces- sary omissions of the Lives. The translation is capital; racy English, yet conveying the quaint old " straightforward " character of the original.]

PAMPHLET.

Sir Robert Peel and the Corn-law Crisis.

[We notice this pamphlet for its temporary interest, as the fairest and most in- telligent account of the changed relations of Sir Robert Peel and the Tory party. The author's view of the Corn question is also sensible, temperate, and large- minded.] NOTE.

We have received from the author of the Etudes sur rAngleterre a com- munication expressive of anxiety lest his opinions, in regard to the mode of dealing with the evils of pauperism in this country, should be confounded with the opinions of those who, covertly or openly, demand a participation between rich and poor of the actual property possessed by the society to which they belong. M. Faucher thinks, with some other modern authori- ties on the subject of industrial life, that the relation between capital and labour might be more beneficially adjusted than by the prevailing system of wages and profits. But he affirms that, in recommending the association of master and workman in the profits of a factory, as also the extension of the "allotment system," he had not in view the smallest infringement of the inviolability of property; that, in fact, his repugnance to supply by way of alms the deficiency of the demand for labour in overpeopled countries, has been repeatedly pronounced; and has, moreover, drawn upon him the censure of certain social theorists of the day, who impute to him too strong a tendency to found his views upon what is termed, somewhat reproach- fully, a common sense basis.

We are glad that so valuable a writer as M. Faucher should distinctly disavow a concurrence in doctrines, which, as it seems to us, can lead to nothing but delusive results; and therefore we gladly give publicity to the fact. But we must hold to the opinion expressed in our number of the 3d January, that many passages in his recent work, bearing upon the griev- ance of manufacturing indigence, carry with them a contrary impression.

"To treat mendicity. as an offence, and yet to fail in rendering public charity accessible to all needy individuals, is an inconsistency—nay more, it is an injus- tice—on the part of the legislature."—Etudes, Vol. I. p. 74. "So that, in the same town, a man may live twice as long as another man, ac- cording to whether he be rich or poor, or whether his abode be in this quarter or in that. When social inequalities are carried to the extent of indifference to human nature, do they not assume the character of a rebellion against Providence, of an act of impiety ?"—Vol. 1.k. 47.

"What appears to me indefensible is, a state of things in which the minority is seen to appropriate to itself, with impunity, the soil of a country, habitations, nay even pure air; banishing the majority into holes and corners, where by close packing they manage to find the space needed for a bed and a coffin."—P. 48.

"When, as is the case in England, the people are thrust out of all participation in the soil, whether as owners or renters, a sort of direct encouragement to insub- ordination is the result."—Vol. L P. 68. "What is wanted is, that the rural population should be reinstated, under the guise of tenancy, in the enjoyment of that of which they have lost the property." —Vol. L p. 69.

"Allowing that a million of lots, or half a million of acres, would be neceesary to furnish half an acre to each of the cottages occupied by rural labourers and most of the manufacturing districts, this would represent merely a fiftieth part of the land now under cultivation in England and Wales."—Vol. II. p. 73.

"The Government should do one of two things: either it should abstain from all interference with the methods employed to obtain alms, or, treating the act of soliciting charity as an offence, the Government is bound to see that nobody suf- fers without being relieved."—P. 75.

If such passages as the foregoing are not calculated to disparage the wealthy in that as they fail to cure poverty, at least they covertly sanc- tion the dangerous proposition that a sacred right to be relieved from its pressure appertains to each individual in a civilized community.