PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

Little Maggie and her Brother : a Sketch for Children. By Mrs. George Hooper. Bell and Daldy, 1861.—This is a sketch of very great freshness and beauty—a living delineation of an unusual, but not at all an unnatural child. The " Holbein baby," who is the main subject of this little book, is really drawn with rare literary merit if it be not, as one or two notes lead us to infer, a sketch from life. Even if that be the case, the discrimination and delicacy with which the picture is painted are qualities by no means commonly found in anything like the same degree. Little Maggie's conversations, both with her favourite brother and with her parents, are delightfully original without being in the least unchildlike. As a book for the young it will be a great favourite, and what is more, it will be a great favourite with elder persons, who have to perform what is some- times the dreary duty, of reading to them literature carefully adapted down to childish capacities. There is scarcely any story in the book that will in the least prevent its being very highly appreciated by the childish mind. Children will be just as much interested in what " Maggie said then," and what " she did next," as in more exciting adventures, and the incident at the end is sufficient crisis for a child's imagination. The conversation of the children about their imaginary Buddland is exceedingly fresh and living. Church Expansion and Liturgical Revision. Longman and Co.—This pamphlet is reprinted from the Edinburgh .Review for January, 1861. It is written in a calm argumentative style, free from passion and pre- judice, but earnest in tone, as the importance of the matter requires and justifies. The writer submits that there are substantially five points to which the advocates of the Liturgy most strongly object. These are: L The form of words used in the Ordination of Priests; 2. The absolution contained in the Office for Visitation of the Sick; 3. The use of the Athanasian Creed in public worship ; 4. Some phrases in the Burial Service; and 5. The structure and 1 e of the Baptismal Services, with the corresponding parts of the Cate • m and of the Order for. Confirmation. How these objections may be re- moved or mitigated is plausibly explained in this decidedly clever article. Sermonspreached in the Chapel of Harrow School. By the Rev. H. Montagu. Butler, MA. Macmillan and Co.,--Though composed for the more particular benefit of the Harrow scholars, these sermons are adapted for every Christian household. There is nothing more striking than the excellent good sense with which they are imbued, a quality not always to be met with in religious discourses. They appeal to the intelligence as well as to an emotional faith, and condescend to perspicuous explanations. Avoiding every extreme, they keep to the broad central path chalked out by the Anglican Church, and thus meet the requirements of all ranks and orders of mankind. Another rare merit to which Mr. Butler may fairly lay claim is brevity. He does not find it necessary to divide what he has to say on any given theme into seventeen heads, with a "finally" to follow, but is content to use a clear condensed style, free from iterations and repetitions, and which enables him to exhaust the subject within a reasonable compass.

My Travels in Many Lands. By W. H. G. Kingston, Esq. W. Kent and Co.—Mr. Kingston appears to have wandered far and wide in the pursuit of pleasure, and to have enjoyed himself as much as usually falls to the lot of an ordinary tourist. He saw everything that was to be seen and made suitable reflections on whatever he wit- nessed. It was his good fortune to be in Portugal during the last Civil War, and to be present at a smart skirmish. Other adventures occasionally befel him, which are related in an off-hand manner that will recommend them to the youthful public, for whose special enter- tainment they are narrated. As a Christmas present, there is nothing to be said against this pretty volume, but serious criticism is out of the question. Orley Farm. By Anthony Trollope. Vol. I. Chapman and Hall.— As soon as a writer of fiction has produced half a dozen novels or ro- mances, it is the fashion to say that his imagination is exhausted, and that his latest work is simply a repetition of the preceding one. Tinder ordinary circumstances this remark is a tolerably safe one to make, but it certainly does not hold good in the case of Mr. Anthony Trol- lope—partly, .perhaps, because he is less indebted to fancy than to close observation. His plots, for instance, are seldom either compli- cated or exciting. Their interest is chiefly derived from their being such faithful transcripts of real life. He takes a group of human beings, such as one meets with every day, and placing them in easy and natural attitudes, makes them talk and act, and sin and suffer, as they would do in the flesh. His strong point, however, is the delinea- tion of the homely or vulgar individuals, who constitute what is con- veniently, rather than correctly, termed the middle-class. In Orley Farm his touch is nowhere more firm and decided than when portray- ing the sayings and doings of commercial gentlemen, the jealous sor- rows of Mrs. Farnival, the demonstrative sympathy of Martha Biggs, or the underbred insolence of the revengeful Dockwrath. He seems actually to revel in the manipulation of such characters. Not the slightest detail is omitted, because in that line of life Mr. Trollope is well aware that nothing is insignificant but what is really important. He descends, therefore, to the minute exactness of Terriers, knowing that the only thing which redeems the repulsive coarseness of low life is the humorous earnestness with which the merest trifles are treated. At the same time he carefully avoids the extravagance which characterizes the school formed on the model of Mr. Dickens. His, personages, whether high-born knights and dames ofelentle blood, or greasy citizens" and wives of low degree, are all r all clothed in flesh and blood, all moving around and amongst us. He is no cari- caturist, but a faithful observer of men and manners, and when future generations seek to know how society was constituted in the middle of the nineteenth century, they have only to betake themselves to the pleasant task of reading 31.r. Trollope's novels, not the least perfect of which is the one named at the head of this notice. As only the first volume of Orley Farm is _yet completed, it would of- course be prema- ture to undertake an elaborate criticism of its merits and defects— though the latter, indeed, would occupy but little time or space to notice. In many respects it differs entirely from its predecessors, for thus far neither dean nor deacon has appeared upon the stage, nor is there any allusion to Tom Towers of the Jupiter. Still the common parentage is easily discernible, nor will the most fastidious critic detect any symptom of degeneration. It is provoking, however, to have to wait twelve months for the dinoiirnent.

Beeton's Book of Garden Management. Parts III, and IV. S. 0. Beeton.—The directions given in this cheap work on gardening are clear and simple enough, but it is impossible to discover on what principle it is compiled. For instance, we find in succession : Russian violets, growing hyacinths in moss, deciduous flowering shrubs, plants that have a tendency to stray, plants that have been frosted, straw- berry-beds, propagation of the mistletoe, and a useful hint in trans- planting. Such a strange sequence as this betrays an entire absence of order and method, without which any manual must be compara- tively worthless. Beeton's Book of Home Pets. Parts VI. and VII. S. 0. Beeton.— The "home pets" treated of in these two parts are the nightingale, sky- lark, titlark, woodlark, titmouse, redbreast, linnet, yellow-hammer, and wren. So long as there are individuals selfish enough to deprive harmless creatures of their liberty for their own private gratification, writers who seek to mitigate the sufferings of the poor captives are to be com- mended for their good intentions, however indifferent may be their performances from a literary point of view. This is the utmost praise we can accord to the editor or compiler of the present publication. The .thschoret of Montserrat: a Tale. In Three Vols. By Sophia Kelly. T. Cautley Newby.—In this tale of the Reformation there is much to praise, and also much to find fault with. The plot is ingenious and well laid, but the characters are either merely rough outlines, or else they are filled in with a coarse brush and a heavy hand. At times there are symptoms of considerable dramatic power, with a tendency, however, to melodramatic effects and loud-voiced declamation. The contrasts are certainly too violent, the excess being especially con- spicuous in the delineation of aristocratic and monkish villany. Of twin-brothers, the one becomes a disciple of Luther, the other a member of the Inquisition and an anchorite torn by remorse, but finally irradi- ated by a glimpse of the truth. Of two half-sisters—the one Italian, the other German—the former, a convert by instinct to Lutheranism, is betrothed to a villain and a bigot, but dies at the stake, while the latter, an ardent Romanist, and intending, to take the veil, embraces Protestantism and the Lutheran twin. There is also a Jewess who is always turning up in some wonderful manner, and at last delivers an edifying discourse in praise of the Reformecereligion. Of preaching and praying there is, indeed, something too much, and the constant intermingling of things sacred and profane jars upon the feelings of the least fastidious. Then the heroine is literally deluged in tears, so that it is almost a relief to find that she gets thoroughly dried at last, thanks to the blazing and crackling furze-bushes piled around her in the square of St. Francis at Seville. And what is to be said of such expressions as this : "Her to whom you would have me offer it is dead?" or this : "Her constant and daily intercourse with Imogen, whom she considered owed all her present exaltation to herself, &c. ?" or this : "Then suffer the consequences of your own rash conduct and him who has brought you to this ?" The idea, too, of being "inured to courtly and highly-polished society" is as strange as that of "the unhappy girl, at once drying up her tears on her knees ;" while the meaning of the following sentence is wholly inexplicable : "The Ame- rican, Fernando Cortez, in the wild dress of his people, brought up the rear.', Such carelessness is quite unpardonable, and Mr. It. B.. Madden would have rendered the authoress a far greater service in correcting such glaring improprieties of speech than in contributing a preface which has very little to do with the story, and which no one but a reviewer will read to the end.

The Monks of Kikrea, and other Ballads and Poems. Bell and Dally. —Strangely enough the Monks of Kilcrea are most generally known, in this country at least, through the Chevalier de Chatelain's spirited translation. It is a poem, however, full of wild vigour, and marked by a well-cadenced melody. The opening "fytte" is parti- cularly effective, the three monks sitting by the bogwood fire impress- ing the mind with a mingled feeling of awe and curiosity. The music of the verse, however, is too often marred by the introduction of barbarous names that jar most unpleasantly on an English ear. The imitation of Sir Walter Scott is also too close and palpable, being all the more wearisome from its very successfulness. In a different mould are cast the following lines, evidently suggested by Byron's verses on Lachin Y Gain: " Tho' grander may rise the bold mountains of Kerry, And fairer the lakes in their arms they enshrine, Where mingles the myrtle with arbutus berry, Like coronal wreaths that the wood fairies twine. Yet dearer to me are the hills of green Thomond, Its hamlets and lochs that gleambright in the sun, With their crests of high rocks, all purple with heather, Or belted with bogs, or with reed tussocks dun."

Some of the minor poems, reprinted from various periodicals, are also very pleasing, being decidedly superior to the generality of such pro- ductions.

Few Words on the Clamour for a Revision of the Liturgy, in a Letter to the Archbishop of York. By the Rev. C. Neville. James Ridgway.—Mr. Neville, as a member of the Council of Lord Ebury's Society, deplores the tenour of his Grace's primary charge so far as it relates to the revision of the Liturgy. He does not himself so much care for a rearrangement or abridgment of the services as for a thorough examination of the doctrines of the Prayer-book. These he shows to be in many instances contradictory of one another, and quite as frequently unsupported by any Scriptural foundation. He, therefore, proposes that four commissioners should be appointed by the Crown in the hope of arriving at an understanding satisfactory to all loarties. One commissioner to be nominated by Lord Palmerston and another by the Archbishop of Canterbury, both of whom shall be laymen: the third by Lord Ebury, and the fourth by the Liberation Society, these two to be either laymen or ministers of any denomi- nation.

The. Old Folks from Home; or, a Holiday in Ireland in 1861. By Mrs. Alfred Getty. Bell and Daldy.—If it afforded Mrs. Getty and her husband any pleasure to write these ;very commonplace letters to their daughters, they were quite right to indulge in the harmless pastime, but that is no excuse for their publication. The letters in question are neither better nor worse than the ordinary type of family correspondence, and may very possibly have been read with a certain degree of interest by the young ladies to whom they were addressed, but there is no earthly reason for intruding them upon the world at large. A more barefaced instance of bookmaking, or a more pitiable display of self-conceit, ha seldom fallen under our notice. History of Modern Music. By John Hullah. Parker, Son, and Bourn.—This admirable little work is, in substance, a course of lectures delivered by Mr. Hullah before the Royal Institution in the early part of 1861, and its two principal objects are set forth in the preface : the first, to illustrate the changes in the idiom of modern music which followed the renaissance, and the second, to draw the attention of the public to what may be described as "unknown music"—the production of the numberless composers of high standing abroad, whose names even, have perhaps never been -heard of by many of the musical amateurs in this country. These objects are carried out in a systematic and carefully compiled classification of all the principal modern composers into four periods and font schools. The four periods may, indeed, strictly speaking, be reduced to two, before and after Palatnna, and the radical changes in the modern system of music effected by that great composer, are described at length. The four principal schools are, of course, the Gallo-Belgian, the Italian, the German, and the Engliah. The refer- ences to the principal composers are generally accompanied by short biographical sketches, without, however, being encumbered by any irrelevant details. As a well-condensed, but at the same time light and readable compendium of the history of modern music, Mr. Hullah's work supplies what has hitherto been a desideratum in musical literature.

.Riddles in Rhymes i a .Book of Enigmas, Charades, and Conundrums.

Edited by Edmund Byer Fulcher. James Hogg and Sons.—Ikuble Acrostics. By various Authors. Edited by K. Ii. James Hogg and Sons.—At this season of the year one must not be too critical. It is useless to inveigh against the waste of time occupied in framing or solving riddles. Turps eel dijrzciles habere sagas may be a

wise maxim, when quoted at a proper time, but who would apply

it to a merry circle round a Christmas fire ? There is a time and place for all things, and thus even a conundrum may pass without protest when the snow is on the ground. Mr. Fetcher's collection appears to contain a vast variety of ingenious puzzles, far too clever for our unpractised powers ; but fortunately their solutions are given in an appendix. )Not so, however, with K. L.'s Double- Acrostics, which every one is left to work out for him- self. As old-fashioned people may be ignorant of the peculiar quali-

ties of a double acrostic, we shall favour them with one example as a test of the great progress made of late years in that department of the belles-lettres : I. Garment, manly Roman's joy. 2. Whose sound my peaceful home annoy. 3. Once I was a little boy 1

Here the first is Togl; 2. 0;gaN ; 3. MaN ; the two wholes, Tom and Ann." Can any thing be a more delightful or instructive amuse- ment for rational beings ? Venetia: a Letter to Bosomy Price, Bag. By Henry Grenfell. James Ridgway.—According to Mr. Bonamy Price, Austria is the

tuttnml guardian of Italy and Germany, the safest ally of England, and the most efficient barrier against French ambition. For these reasons she must be left in unmolested possession of the Quadrilateral, and even strengthened at all hazards as the chief bulwark of continental conservatism. On the other hand, Mr. Henry Grenfell is of opinion that his friend is utterly mistaken in his views, and as feeble in ex-

pressinF, as he is wrong-headed in adopting, them. The true guardian of continental order is Prussia, with the smaller States grouped around her, while Italy, if free from the Alps to the Adriatic, would be quite strong enough to protect herself. Napoleon III., says Mr. Grenfell, is much more occupied in keeping what he has got than in devising schemes of farther aggrandizement. He combines the wariness of a politician with the reckless impulses of a man of pleasure, and is, therefore, neither to be wholly trusted nor blindly feared. It may very likely be an amusing pastime for these two respectable gentlemen to tilt against one another with headless spears, but why is the public invited to look on and criticize their very indifferent horsemanship? A battle between frogs and mice is not a particularly edifying or ex- citing spectacle.

Chapters from French History; St. Louis, Joan of Arc, Henry IV.; with Sketches of the Intermediate Periods. By John Hampden Gurney, ILA., Sc. (Longman and Co) Foretelling Weather: Being a Description of a Newly-Discovered Lunar Weathor- System. By S. M. Saxby, 1t .N., Sc. (Longman and Co.) Instinct and Reason • or, The First Principles of Human Knowledge. By Sir George Ramsay, Bart. Sc. (Walton and Maberly.)

Leisure Hours in Town. By the author of " The Recreations of a Country Parson." (Parker. Son, and Bourn.)

Lires of Wits and Humorists. By John 11mbs, F.S.A., &e. In two volumes. (Richard Bentley.)

The Children's Garland, from the best Poets. Selected and arranged by Coventry Patmore. (Macmillan and Co.)

The Historical Finger-post. A handy book of Terms, Phrases, Epithets, Cogno- mens, Allusions, Sc., in connexion with Universal History. By Edward Shelton. (Lockwood and Co.) Punch. VoL X. January to June, 1846. (Bradbury and Evans.) The Early Italian Poets, from Ciullo d'Alcanso to Dante Alighieri. In the original metres, together with Dante's " Vita Move." Translated by D. G. Rosetti." (Smith, Elder and Co.) The Soul's Exodus and Pilgrimage. By James Baldwin Brown, B.A., Sc. (Snlith, Elder and Co.)

Schoolboy Honour. A Tale of Halminster College. By the Rev. H. D. Adams, ILA., Sc. A new edition, with illustrations. (Rontledge and Co.)

The Red Erie; or, the Whalers Last Cruise. A Tale. By R. IL Ballantyne. With illustrations by Coleman. New Edition. (Routledge and Co.)

Romantic Episodes of Chivalric and Mediwval France; to which are appended some few Passages from Montaigne. Now done into English by Alexander Vance. (George Manwaring.) The Handy Book of Company Drill and Practical Instructor. By Charles Hastings Collette, First Middlesex Artillery Volunteers. With numerous Illustrative Diagrams. (Houlitton and Wright.)

Rosedale ; or, the Deserted Manor House. An English Fireside Story. By Miss E. M, Stewart. (Bernard Douglas.) LeconsGradeties de Traduction et de Lecture; or, Graduated Lemons in Translation and Reading. By Idenri Van Laun. (Triibner and Co.)

Chancery Lane ; or, the Glass Case. A Lay of the Law. By F. (Effingham Wilson.) Lectures Delivered before the Dublin Young Men's Christian Association in Connexion

with the United Church of England and Ireland, during the Year 1861 (Hodges, Smith and Co.)

A Translation of the Syriac Peshito Version of the Psalms of David With Notes, Critical and Explanatory. By the Rev. Andrew Oliver, M.A. (E. P. Dutton and Co.)

• SERIALS.

A Dictionary of the Bible, comprising Antiquities, Biography, Geography, and

Natural History. By various Writers. Edited by William Smith, LLD., Sc.

Parts L and IL (John Murray.) The Cosmopolitan.

The Museum.

The National Review.

The Englishwoman's JOttrlid.

The Popular Science Review.

The Industrial Magazine, and Trades' and Co-operative Record. (J. Kenny.)

Bout ledge's Illustrated Natural History. (Rontledge and Co.) The Ladies' Treasury. (Houlaton and Wright) Good Words. (Alexander Strahan.) The Westminster Review. (George Manwaring.)

The British Quarterly Review. (Jackson, Watford, and Hodder.)

PAMPHLETS.

The Case of the Trent Examined (James Ridgway.) England and the Disrupted States of America. By Thomas Colley Grattan. Third Edition. (James Ridgway.) The Inner Life of the Civil Service. By J. Herbert Stack (James L Ridgway.) Remarks on the Royal Commisioners' Embankment Report. With Notices for Em- bankment.Walls on a plan that would largely contribute to Commercial Con- venience, keep the River pure, and effectually prevent Tidal Floods. By Sir William Worsley, Bart, Sc. (Edward Stanford.)