CURRENT LITERATURE.

Life and Writings of Charles Leslie, 111.A., Nonjuring Divine. By the Rev. R. J. Leslie, M.A. (Rivingtons.)—The author of a "Short and Easy Method with the Deists" was a conspicuous man in his own day, and as an upright Nonjuror deserved the reputation he received. He is well-nigh forgotten now, because the controversies to which he devoted his life are obsolete, and also, in the judgment of his biographer, on account of "the decrease of theological learning and study among clergy as well as laity, whin ensued upon the establishment of the House of Hanover, upon the throne of Great Britain." The first Napoleon, as we all know, " filled the butchers' shops with large blue flies;" and George I., according to Mr. Leslie, appears to have been responsible for results equally mysterious. He goes further back still, and discovers unnumbered evils in" William's dark and terrible career." "The Revolution," says the writer, "introduced into England more misery, wickedness, and profligacy, than had at any period disgraced it before ;" and elsewhere he writes of "the tide of infidelity and corruption" it brought with it. Indeed, he regards the usurpation of William as "a page in history which even descendants of Whigs may blash to read." According to Charles Leslie, rebellion against a King invested with a divine commission is worse than tyranny ; and the foundation of a Government can never be the people—" they are the party to be governed, and therefore cannot be the governors." The Rev. R. J. Leslie seems to be of the same opinion ; and his views of ecclesiastical questions are as old•fashioned as his political•jadgments. "A man," wo read, " may leave any of the multitudinous sects for admission into the Church, because at moat it is only leaving a bundle of opinions and an unauthorised system ; but transition' from one Church to another is a tremendous assertion of private judgment in matters of faith for which comparatively few individuals can show call or capacity." Mr. Leslie is more familiar with controversy than with the art of the biographer. In this account of Charles Leslie the man disappears in the disputant ; and the few barren facts related about him, apart from the account of his writings, might be compressed into a single chapter. If the narrative fails to interest, the reader will find but scant compensation in the view taken of the period and in the judgments passed upon characters that are now historical. And the references to modern writers, and to recent points of controversy, show occasionally more prejudice than wisdom. Gildon may have been maligned by Pope for his venal quill ; in all liklihood he was ; possibly he is not fairly judged by Mr. Leslie Stephen, who calls him " a poor creature ;" but to write of this depreciation of a controversialist as a " stale device for discounting an adversary much superior to one's self," is a statement too foolish for discussion. Again, Mr. Leslie is justified in saying, if he believes it to be true, that " not a single piece of evidence has been furnished by Hallam in substantiation of any one of the accusations which, with unsparing and indiscriminating fury, he has urged against Nonjurors ;" but he need not have committed the absurdity of culling the historian an affected philosopher and Whig Deist of the old school who betrays, in his scorn of religion, a latent fear that it might after all be true. When the writer asserts that the "disbelievers and misbelievers of all sorts," whom Leslie numbered among his converts, " were far abler men than sceptics or critics of the present day," he is committing the fault for which he chooses to blame Hallam. The amount of ability possessed by a large class of men in one age as compared with a similar class in another, is a thing which obviously does not admit of testing. Mr. Leslie, however, is not a cautious writer when excited by the spirit of controversy. Neither is he always accurate in his statements. Writing of the Kit-Cat Club, ho says :—" It was derived from Christopher Catt, abbreviated into Kit-Cat, who kept the Fountain Tavern in the Strand, where the lights of the Whig Party delighted to assemble and regale themselves with mutton pies, indigestible food which may account for the general dullness of their literary produc; tions. Of course, there were exceptions, and facile princeps the poet Dryden." Dryden died in 1700, and as the club was not then in existence, Mr. Leslie's blander is obvious ; the value of his criticism upon the general dullness of the members may be estimated by the fact that among the authors and wits belonging to it were Addison, Congreve, Steele, and Garth.

For his Friend. By E. H. Abdy-Williams. 3 vols. (W. Swan Sennenschein and Co.)—We wish to enter a protest against the objectionable form in which this novel is published. The three volumes contain 214, 206; and 170 pages respectively ; and these are loosely printed. The .publishers can only be excused for such a book if they wish to reduce the " three-volume" system to an absurdity. The tale itself is fairly good. A young man falls in love with the lady to whom his friend is betrothed ; and the lady herself, after a while, discovers that her heart is given, not to her betrothed, but to the other. What is the upshot of it, we shall leave our readers to discover, if they will, for themselves ; but we may say that the tale is told with a good deal of spirit and some humour. We cannot say much in favour of that part of the story which has not to do with the lover of Katherine Balfour and her sisters. The device which made a separation between Lord Keith and his son is nothing less than absurd. Men do not condemn their sons as guilty of forgery on such evidence as convinced Lord Keith.

In the Trades, the Tropics, and the Roaring Forties. By Lady Brassey. (Long-mans, Green, and Co.)—This is the best got-up book of travels which has ever appeared. The illustrations are perfect ; and Mr. Pritchett, the draughtsman, and Messrs. Pearson and Cooper, the engravers, are to be congratulated on having demonstrated that England is capable of rivalling and even surpassing the perfections of -Harper's and Scribner's magazines. It is a new and happy thought to place detailed maps of the place being visited and talked about as a sort of cameo in blue and colours in the middle of the usual black and white engraving, representing, as it were, a section of the scenery of the place, with its distinctive vegetation, and sometimes its character. istic fauna. Some of the little bits of scenery areexquiaite, and the character-sketches are remarkably clever. Merely turning-over the book to look at the pictures would bo a geographical education ; and thO views of some of the West Indian Islands and South America would inspire a "longing to be at 'em" as keen as that of Charles Kingsley, or that inspired by Charles Kingsley before he went there. Lady Brassey's text is written in a simple and unassuming manner, and she manages to convey a very good idea of the countries seen, while we are made to wonder every now and then how she could have endured going to see them, since whenever there was a " sea " on she was a martyr to sea-sickness, and generally took a headache ashore with her in consequence to accompany her on her

rides and drives. She is apt to give striking pieces of information which, more than the most laborious fine-writing, bring home to you the character of a place, as it were, by accident. Thus when, after hours of climbing in Madeira up steep and rocky mountains, they come above the pine-forests to the top of a plateau overlooking the sea, "they lunch on the threshing-floor at Cabo Curao,"—" an odd place for a threshing-floor, but corn only grows on the tops of the hills in Madeira, and the fieldswere therefore close at hand." We get, perhaps, a little too much botany, considering how uninteresting botany is made by the wretched nomenclature that has been adopted, which makes you pause at every name to think what the dog-Latin word means. But

some of the longer accounts of the more important trees and plants, whether derived from botany books or from observation, are both novel and interesting to the general reader. It is pleasant, for instance, to hear of the cameliaa in Madeira, and of the man who went to see a spot where they grew in groves, and could find none, but on going a second time was told to look upwards, and found "a huge canopy of large scarlet and white blossoms between forty and fifty feet overhead." It is not every one who knows that coffee is made, not from berries, but from the seeds inside a berry ; while the description of the "gorgeous scarlet, yellow, green, and crimson cacao-pods" hanging on trees "over a hundred years old," and when cut open revealing "small black seeds, embedded in what looks like custard, which when quite fresh tastes like the most delicious lemon ice-cream, with a delicate soupcon of vanilla chocolate," is enough to make one take the next boat to Trinidad, especially as the cream is completely wasted, and these gorgeous fruits only go to produce the uninteresting cocoa-nibs, which are the dried seeds. The origin of Brazil-nuts, too, will be news to most people. They are not independent entities, but "are packed away, or rather grow with the utmost mathematical precision, inside an exceedingly hard shell, about as big as a cocoa-nut with its external covering. There is a softer place at one end which, when the nuts are ripe, bursts open, the contents being scattered on the ground. The monkeys are aware of this peculiarity ; and being especially fond of the nuts, they not unfrequently get caught by thrusting their paws into the opening shell before they have quite reached the bursting stage, and being unable to withdraw them. It frequently happens that the interior nut, which is both hard and heavy, falls from the tree, perhaps from a height of a hundred, or even a hundred and fifty, feet without bursting," which must be worse than a hail-storm. Even more entertaining than the laud-vegetables of Brazil are the sea-vegetables and the fishes and other " beasts " that haunt them in the Bahama Islands, and the sponge-fisheries of the Bermudas. It is month-watering, too, to read of fresh pines selling at ls. a dozen, afterwards sold here at 3s. Gd. a piece, and often rotten then. Altogether, there is a good deal that is interesting scattered through these rather voluminous records of travel.

The Missing Man. By H. Sutherland Edwards. (Remington and Co.)—Mr. Sutherland Edwards publishes this story in a form which commends itself to the common-sense of the public readers, and which has had so distinguished a success in "Called Back." Instead of the conventional three volumes at a price which no one dreams of paying, here is a little book, easily held in the band and stowed away in the pocket, and to be purchased for a shilling, or, rather, for what a shilling means. And very good money's worth it is; for it is quite as possible for literature to be low-priced without being cheap as it is for a sermon to be tedious without being long. The story is founded on one of those curious mental phenomena of which the physiologists are just finding their way to discover the cause,—partial defect of power, owing to localised injury. This is ingeniously worked-in with a story of happy and unhappy love. We shall not attempt to analyse it, because this might be to spoil its interest, but briefly say that it appeals strongly to the reader's sympathies and satisfies his sense of justice, and that it is told in a simple, pleasing

way. •

Profound Problems in Theology and Philosophy. By the Rev. George Jamieson, B.D. (Simpkin, Marshall, and Co.)—This is not the first time, we believe, that Mr. Jamieson has adventured in the field of religions speculation, but the book now before us may be regarded as the mature product of his mind. It is a book, he says, the result of more than thirty years' reflection. In it he propounds what he esteems to be a new theory of the atonement, and discusses amongst other things the nature and origin of evil. No one can deny that these present "profound problems." Whether they are to be solved by theories or otherwise is another matter. It should, however, be said that Mr. Jamieson is strictly a scriptural theologian and philosopher, and to a large extent scriptural according to the authorised English version of the Bible. It therefore follows that there is nothing within the pages of this book to shock the most rigidly orthodox. There is no destructive German philosophy here, only some dim Hegelianism. The work is intended to be constructive. A serious effort is made to build-up a system of philosophy in great

measure out of theological and Biblical dogmas of the Calvinistic order. If the serious and measured provision of a strict philosophical discussion is sometimes lost in the rhetorical form of a pulpit discourse, that, perhaps, is not the author's fault, for he is a Scotch " preacher of the Word." Nevertheless, passages like the following, of which the book is full, cannot be said to advance our spiritual enlightenment much, nor yet to give us a deeper conception of the great mystery of Christ's sacrifice :—" Contemplate, then, this blood, the blood of the new covenant, the blood of a spiritual dispensation, that is, blood which gives spiritual life, the life-blood of immortality ; contemplate the animating principle of this dispensation, under which we have the privilege to exist. 'The blood of the everlasting covenant,' in contrast with the blood of a temporary covenant of carnal things— the blood which 'brought again from the dead the Lord Jesus,' whereby ho showed himself alive by many infallible proofs as holding the life of immortality. We have this spirit-blood bequeathed to us by Christ. Sprinkled forth in Heaven it descends to earth. The spirit of God bath taken it as the essential life of Christ, and bath conveyed the same to us. It is contained in the Divine Word ; it operates as the poison of sin on the one hand, and as the life of righteousness on the other ; it is the application to us of the atonement of Christ ; it involves in its application our regeneration ; it plants in our souls the seed of the resurrection-body in and through the decay of the outward man." Thus Mr. Jamieson proceeds more or less sermonisingly through six hundred pages. This may, perhaps, be good pulpit rhetoric ; but that it is either very new or very profound is more than we dare affirth.

Royal Favour. By A. S. C. Wallis. Translated from the Dutch by C. I. Irving. 3 vols. (W. Swan Sonnensohein and Co.)—We are afraid that few English readers will know enough of Swedish history between the death of Gustavus Vasa and the accession of Gustavus Adolphus, to be able properly to,appreciate the bearing of this story. The name of Eric XIV. may possibly be remembered in the succession of kings, with the additional knowledge that he was a profligate tyrant. That G6ran Person was his Minister—it is commonly supposed, his unscrupulous Minister, or rather, Miss Wallis thinks, a patriot. fallen on evil times, and terribly deceived, especially in the character of his master—will certainly be new to most readers. So far, then, the subject is unpromising ; it is obscure and it is remote; but it is, unquestionably, treated with great ability. The conception of Person's character and policy is very fine, be it in accordance with historical truth or no. The man with his noble aims, his faith, his hopes, and his disappointments, is made to live before ns with no common skill. The style, too, to which, as far as we can judge, the translator has done justice, is full of strength and dignity. It is true there is too much of the book. A single volume would have had better chance of success, for we have not so much leisure here as they seem to have in Holland ; still, it deserves a respectful welcome.

Practical Journalisns. By John Dawson. (J. Upcott Gill.)—This is a very practical and sensible little book, giving as good advice as

can, we think, be given under circumstances which are necessarily very various. Mr. Dawson thinks that "in Press work there are more rewards of moderate worth than are to be found in Law, or in Medicine, or in the Church." Very likely he is right ; the difficulty is the beginning. Here Mr. Dawson's advice is very sound. " The great fault of the literary aspirant is that he usually aims too high."

Accordingly, he recommends the writing of paragraphs and industry in acquiring the practical use of shorthand, by way of a beginning. If the aspirant wants to know how much he will he paid, he may find

some interesting information in chapter xis. This refers to journalism ; and it is, indeed, to journalism that his attention is directed. He will not always be very handsomely remunerated ; bat he will, at all events, not have to be content with such chances as are set forth in the following :—" A novelette of 28i columns. To be characterised by vigour of style, fulness of sensational incident, and conversational sprightliness. Price from £6 to £10." " Penny-a-lining" is a good deal better than this. At the lower price it means about twelve lines, at the higher about seven, for a penny. They were to be written, it is to be understood, on approval. The present writer asked the other day a young writer who was at work at novelettes how much he could earn. " At the rate of eighteenpence an hour." This may be taken as about a minimum. The maximum may perhaps be put at £800 per annum. This excludes the great prizes of editorships of leading journals, and the price which a man gets for his name.

Of to California. Adapted from the Flemish of Hendrik Conscience by James F. Cobb. (Wells Gardner, Darton, and Co.)— People who were "off to California" forty years ago meant golddigging, now they mean planting vines, or some other quiet occupation. The scene of this story is laid in the more exciting times. The adventurers go through the greatest perils ; and though they find a wonderful treasure in the pool of a mountain torrent, ultimately get little out of their labours, except it be the judicious conclusion that "honest work in the dear fatherland" is bettor than making

baste to be rich by searching for nuggets. This is a good story of its " kind, told with spirit, and admirable in tone and moral.

Life and Letters of Adolphe Monod. By one of his Daughters. Authorised translation. Abridged from the original. (James Nisbet and Co.)—Adolphe Monod was not a strong thinker, and it is at least doubtful whether he can be called a great preacher ; but the influence of his fine eloquence, and still more of his saintly character, was so wide-spread and profound, that an adequate biography of him could hardly have failed to possess both interest and value. It seems, however, that Monod himself, during his last illness, expressed a wish that no Life of himself should appear ; and we learn from the preface that the spirit of this wish is supposed to be carried out by the publication of a book which, while biographical in form, tells us simply nothing that at all enables us to realise the human side of Monod's life and character. As the present translation is an abridgment, we cannot tell whether its deficiences are due to the writer or the translator; but, whoever the culprit may be, it is certain that the picture presented to us in this volume is not of a flesh-and-blood human being, but rather of what Carlyle would call a " theological phantasm." The book is, we should say, written mainly for purposes of edification —largely for the edification of readers of one rather narrow and unintelligent school—and only secondarily with a view of making Monod really known to the world. The majority of the letters quoted testify to the tender spirituality of Monod's nature ; but the thinness and triteness of many of them come as a surprise to us, and certainly do not raise our estimate of their writer as an intellectual or even spiritual force. In the early part be came frequently into contact with a man of real spiritual genius—Thomas Erskine of Linlathenwhom the translator, with patronising bent:1W, describes as "of genuine piety and evangelical principles, though not altogether sound in his doctrinal views ;" but there are no indications that the vitalising thought of Erskine left any permanent impression on Monod's mind, or he could hardly have been content to abide by the traditions of the formal and rigid Evangelicalism of which Erskine's thought has proved so powerful a solvent. In the letters we have found little that is to us stimulating or inspiring, and one of them, addressed to the father of a young person who is about to marry a Roman Catholic, is unpleasantly harsh and dictatorial in tone; but there are one or two sentences in an invocatiou written after the conclusion of his conversations with Mr. Erskine which strike us as being both beautiful and helpful. Maned writes :—"O, God of truth ! Thou canst not refuse to impart truth to me. Then art pledged to conduct me to it Therefore, trusting in Thee, and uncertain only as to the time when Thou wilt be pleased to enlighten me, I would hasten that time, by acting henceforth as one sure of finding the truth." The true attitude for a brave spirit, supported by a central faith, but harassed on the circumfereuce of his being by doubts and perplexities, has seldom been more finely indicated than in the words we have italicised.

Egypt and its Future, by J. A. Wyllie, LL.D. (Hamilton, Adams, and Co.), reminds us of Mr. Spencer's description of Hugli Miller as being less a geologist than a theologian studying geology. DrWyllie is less of a traveller and of a social observer than of a theologian —and a stout Protestant theologian, too—securing in travel and observation grist for his professional mill. He is evidently very much in earnest; but why intrude his earnestness so much ? It may be a trifle that the Battle of Tel-el-Kebir should prompt him to say, "The victory, won with magical swiftness, suggests comparison with some of those recorded in the book of Joshua." But is there not a touch of fanaticism, if not of bitterness approaching to absurdity, in this ?—" Were breath to reenter these mummies, and were Rameses II. to walk out of his winding-sheet and to ask,—` How goes the controversy between Egypt and the Hebrews ?'—we should take him to the desolate site of Oa, and bid him mark that of all its glorious temples not one now remains, nor of its gods is there one to whom a knee is now bowed, or whose name has not long since been blotted out ; while the Jehovah, with whom he made war, and whose worshippers he thought to have -destroyed, has filled the earth with His renown, and is now served and worshipped by the leading nations of the world." We do not find that Dr. Wyllie has added very much to the sum-total of our knowledge of Egypt. But his book is well arranged, and it is short; and Dr. Wyllie sometimes gives his own experiences in a picturesque way.

Gerald. By Eleanor C. Price. 3 vols. (Chatto and Windus.)— This is a satisfactory love-story. It is vigorously written, and it relies for its interest on no illegitimate attractions. The heroine is a young lady of very decided character, with a good opinion of herself, and a decided inclination to look down upon others. The hero is a gentleman fallen upon evil days, for having wasted his small patrimony he is obliged to serve an unscrupulous brother and his brother's still more unscrupulous partner. As the hero's unscrupulous brother has swindled the heroine's too confiding uncle, we have the materials for some complications. Then there is the heroine's easy-going friend, Helen, and her commonplace husband, two people who might servo • for minor characters in one of Miss Austen's novels, and an old lover of the heroine, who is fatally slow in making-up his mind about marriage, and other dramatis personce. The scene is shifted to the diamond-diggings of South Africa, which Miss Price seems to describe from experience. All the time people talk naturally and briskly ; and the result is a book which, though perfectly readable, does not make any particular impression on the mind.

Dod's Parliamentary Companion for 1885. (Whittaker and Co.)— This useful little work completes with this number a separate epoch in the history of the House of Commons. It is, in all probability, the last Dod which can appear before the Franchise Act, and what will shortly be the Redistribution Act, shall have come into operation and revolutionised everything. Hence we suspect that Dod's Parliamentary Companion for 18S5 will be even more in demand than it has hitherto been, as constituting the last step in this flight of political stairs. Let us hope that the first step of the next flight will show little but improvement when we come to compare the two.

Geographical Reader. Book VII. By J. R. Blakiaton, M.A.This addition to the illustrated educational series issued by Messrs. Griffith, Farrar], and Co., deals with the ocean and the solar system ; it is adapted to meet the requirements of the Education Department, and is furnished with an atlas of physical geography.

The Orkney Islands and The Shetland Fisheries (IV. Brown, Edinburgh), a reprint of two interesting papers written by a patriotic Orcadian in 1775, "with the intention of arousing British capitalists to the commercial capabilities of the Northern Islands, and of stimulating his countrymen to greater agricultural and mercantile activity."

BOOKS RECEIVED.—The Conflict of Oligarchy and Democracy, six lectures, by J. A. Picton, M.A., M.P. (Alexander and Shepheard).— A We at One Living, by A. Getty, D.D. ; Good Friday and Easter in a London Mission Room, by C. Maokeson (Bell and Sons).—Bulandehahr, sketches of an Indian district, social, historical, and architectural, by F. S. Growse, C.I.E. (Benares Medical Hall Press).— Gindely's History of the Thirty Yearz;' War, translated by A. Tea Brook, 2 vols., illustrated ; a new and revised edition, with illustrations on steel, of Phipps's translation of Do Boarrienne's Memoirs of Napoleon Buonaparte, in 3 vols. (Bentley and Son).—The Egyptian Red-Book (Blackwood and Sons).— Ancient Light on Modern Life, by Rev. G. G. Macleod (J. Blackwood and Co.)—Characteristics front the Writings of Cardinal Manning, arranged by W. S. Lilly (Burns and Oates).—The fifth yearly issue of the Educational Year Book (Cassell and Co.)—Aspects of Fiction, by R. S. de C. Laffan (Field and Tuer).—Methods of Teaching History, being Volume I. of the "Pedagogical Library," edited by G. S. Hall, and published by Ginn, Heath, and Co., Boston, U.S.Cholera : 1Vhat can the State do to Prevent it ? by J. M. Cunningham, M.D. (Government Printing Office, Calcutta).—The Book-Lover, a guide to the best reading, by J. Baldwin, Ph.D. (Jansen, McClurg, and Co., Chicago).—The Medical Annual (H. Kimpton).—School Board Idylls, by J. Runciman (Longmans, Green, and Co.)—Practical Botany, by F. 0. Bower and S. H. Vines, Part I., " Phanerogamac Pteridophita," an addition to the "Manuals for Students" series issued by Messrs. Macmillan and Co.—E.Lamples on Heat and Elec tricity, by E. H. Turner, B.A. (Macmillan and Co.)—Communion Memories, the record of some Sacramental Sundays, by J. R. Macduff D.D. (Nisbet and Co.)—Bible Characters, selections from sermons of A. G. Mercer, D.D., with a memoir by M. Marble (Putnam's Sons).

Fetish-Worship in the Fine Arts, by S. Whitman ; The Mark Twain Birthday-Book (Remington and Co.)—Typical Developments; or, Ideals of Life, an ethical drama, by T. S. Goodlake (Roworth).

—A new edition of The Remarkable History of Sir T. Upntore, M.P., by R. D. Blaokmore ; a cheap edition of Waterside Sketches, by W. Senior (Sampson Low and Co.)—The fourth yearly issue of Ellis's Irish Education Directory (Sealy and Co., Dublin ; Simpkin, Marshall, and Co., London).—The Medical Register for 1885; and The Dentists' Register for 1885 (Spottiewoode and Co.)—The third yearly issue of the Official Year-Book of the Church of England (S.P.O.K.)—The Geology of Shropshire, by J. D. La Touche (E. Stanford).—The Life of King Harold, from the manu script in the British Museum, edited, with notes and a translation, by W. De Gray Birch, F.S.A. (E. Stock).—Selections from the Poets passages illustrating peculiarities of style, pathos, or wit, by W.

Theobald (Triibuer and Co.)—The Electrician's Directory for 1885 (G. Tucker).—A new edition of Caroline Fry's Table of the Lord (Whiting and Co.).

MAGAZINES, ETC.—We have received the following for April :—The Art Journal, the line engraving in which is "The Courtship of William II. of Orange," by J. and L. Godfrey, after the picture of D.

W. Wynfleld.—The Magazine of Art.—The English Illustrated Magazine.—Mind.—The Theatre.—The Contemporary Pulpit.—Temple Bar.

—Merry England.—The Month.—The Argosy.—Time.—The Nautical Magazine.—The Antiquarian Magazine.—The Army and Navy Magazine.—The Science Monthly.—The Homiletic Magazine.—The Monthly