PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.
BOOKS.
Travels in Siberia; including Excursions Northwards, down the Obi, to the Polar Circle, and Southwards to the Chinese frontier. By Adolph Erman. Translated from the German, by William Desborough Cooley. In two volumes.
Hudson's Bay; or Everyday Life in the Wilds of North America, during Six Years' Residence in the Territories of the Honourable Hudson's Bay Com- pany. With Illustrations. By Robert M. Ballantyne.
Captain Spike; or the Islets of the Gulf. By J. Fenimore Cooper, Esq., Author of " The Spy," &c. In three volumes.
Cosmos: Sketch of a Physical Description of the Universe. By Alexander von Humboldt. Volume II. Translated under the superintendence of Lieutenant-Colonel Edward Sabine, ILA., For. Sec. R.S.
Tables exhibiting the various Fluctuations in Three per Cent Consols in every Month during each Year from 1789 to 1847 inclusive; with ruled pages for their continuance to 1857. To which are annexed, the Amounts and Rate of Interest of all the Loans contracted since 1788, and the Amount of Navy, Victualling, and Exchequer Bills funded. By JamVan Sommer Secretary to the Managers of the Stock Exchange. [This is the table-book for the economist, statist, and man of business who has anything to do with the Funds. If not the most remarkable quarto in the world, it has certainly one of the most remarkable subjects. How any nation could have gone through it all and survived is the puzzle. The work is a financial chart that has something more than startling facts or phainomena to stimulate investigation. As one observes the successive dribbling loans, year by year, and sometimes seve- ral times in the same year, under the Pitt regime' one is tempted to inquire whether the Heaven-born was so great a financier as Lord John Russell pronoun- ces him, except in the way of raising the wind. The naked figures of the loans under the Revolutionary war speak more forcibly than eloquence for procuring war supplies within the year, by almost any weight of taxation; for the interest gra- dually swelled to nearly the cost of the war. What Mr. Van Sommer calls "tables" are rather charts. Every right- hand page contains twelve perpendicular columns for the months of the particular year, with horizontal lines capable of indicating fluctuations of more than twenty per cent, and their fractions to one eighth per cent. The prices are marked by a line, (like a mariner's course, but thicker,) touching the highest and lowest prices in the year, marking the price in each month, and exhibiting the fact sought for at a glance much more clearly than by figures The left-hand side of the page gives a brief notice of the principal political events that occurred in the year, with the various loans and the rate per cent at which they were contracted. The amount of the Exchequer or Navy Bills funded is also noted, as well as the ope- ration of the Sinking-fund, and the amount of the Funded Debt up to the time. There is an index, as Mr. Van Sommer names it; but which is in reality a dam- mary of the contents; all the loans, for example, being brought together under the head of " Loans.") The Antigone of Sophocles, in Greek and English; with an Introduction and Notes. By John William Donaldson, B.D., Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, &c. The Agamemnon of ,cEschylus; the Greek Text, with a Translation into English Verse, and Notes Critical and Explanatory. By John Covington, B.A., Fellow of University College, Oxford. [These translations of two great works of the greatest Greek tragic poets have somewhat similar objects, and bear an outward resemblance to each other. Each translator aims at making his original better known—to the English reader by the version and notes; to the student of Greek by the help that version and notes may give him in mastering the text, which is printed with the translation; to both classes by an introduction explanatory of the general scope and character of the respective tragedies. Here, however, the parallel ends. Mr. Donaldson aims at giving as literal a translation as possible of the Antigone of Sophocles, in a homely kind of blank verse. Mr. Conington aspires to the merit of a poetical translation; and lays down in his preface the principles on which he has pro -eeded. These, though just, have no peculiar novelty: the main feature is, to be analogous rather than literal, if literal accuracy is contrary to the genius of the language into which the translation is to be made, and to the spirit of the original authors drift.
Allowance is to be made for the greater difficulty of presenting chylus to a modern mind—he became too ponderous even for the Athenians of a declining age; and it is more creditable to fall short in an ambitious than in a humbler attempt. Premising thus much, we incline to prefer Mr. Donaldson's Antigone: it is clearer, closer, and more definite without being less poetical than the Aga- memnon, which is indeed somewhat hazy. The introduction, too, is more compre- hensive than Mr. Conington's.] The Pheedrus Lysis, and Prolagoras of Plato. A new and literal Trans- lation, mainly from the Text of Bekker. By J. Wright, B.A., Trinity Col- lege, Cambridge. [A close translation, chiefly designed to assist the Greek student.] England the Civilizer; her History Developed in its Principles, with re- ference to the Civilizational History of Modern Europe, (America in-. elusive,) and with a view to the denouement of the difficulties of the hour. By a Woman. [The subject of this volume is very large. Generally, it is nothing leas than the e pint of modern history treated in its very essence; specially, it is the essential characteristics of the history and people of England during her whole career, with the mission which Providence or Fate has imposed upon her in civilizing the world by combining order with progress. We will not say the " Woman" of the titlepage is unable to cope with this great argument; for the book contains fre- quent indicatione of the power of perceiving a great principle, and tracing it through the forms in which it is developed. As yet, however, all is crude, and we may add feminine: the reader has theories rather than views put before him the germs of ideas rather than ideas themselves. The style is indifferent—founded upon that of the French and German prose-poets, or more truly, perhaps, a modifi- cation of Carlyle's. He first combined the personification of the Frenchmen with the mysticism of the German, but added to them both an imagination and a strength of his own, forming the tertian quid which mortals for shortness call Carlyleism.] Some of the Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, and the Book of Huswifery, ,fc. By Thomas Tosser, Gentleman. Newly corrected and edited by H. M. W. [This little volume contains about two-thirds of Tosser's once famous and ,by hearsay still well-known work. As a guide to scientific husbandry founded upon agricultural chemistry and so forth, it is of course obsolote; but its observations on natural pluenomena and on the economical elements of the art are still as true as ever. A considerable part of the book relates to farming morals and manners,— the regulation of the household, the proper medium to be observed in expenses, the hospitable reception of friends, and the right observance of festivals, not as regards spiritual but carnal things. The pith of these views is still useful to an agricultural family of moderate means; but the chief interest of the book is in its pictures of farming and farm-life under the Tudors.] Principles of Geometry, Mensuration, Trigonometry, Land-Surveying, and Levelling, 4-c. By Thomas Tate, Mathematical Master of the National Society's Training College, Battersea. [A very useful book, primarily intended for the practical student who has not much time to spare, and designed to introduce him to a sufficient knowledge of the subjects indicated in the title, by the readiest way. This is not attempted by Mr. Tate in the popular compendious style, that escapes difficulties by lea vii% them out, but by seizing the essential parts of the subject, and exhibiting them 111 the most impressive manner, so that the rule, its reason, and its use, are often sub- mitted together. Of course this striking plainness is more frequently and readily done in the elements of surveying and mensuration, where the results of long and elaborate studies are realized in a practical rule, than in mathematical pro- blem, &c.; but the book throughout is a valuable contribution to useful knolt- ledge.] A Systematic Catalogue of the Eggs of British Birds; arranged with a view to supersede the use of Labels for Eggs. By the Reverend S.C. Ma- lan, M.A., Vicar of Broadwindsor, Dorset. [The primary object of this book is to supersede the necessity of labels for eggs, by the use of munbent, with the letters a, b, c, corresponding to the references in this catalogue. A very important object of the systematic catalogue, in our opin ion, is its utility as an oOlogiat's journal, where he may briefly enter the leading particulars of all the birds-nests he takes (a), and all the eggs he buys (6), or exchanges (c). The birds are arranged in scientific order after the classification of Tomminek, with short notices of the habitat and eggs of each species.] The Beloved Disciple: Reflections on the History ',of St. John. By Mrs. J. B. Webb, Author of " Naomi," &c. [Although taking the name of chapters, the divisions of this book form in reality ten sermons on the life and character of St. John, quotations from Scripture, pre- fixed to each section, fulfilling the office of " texts." The singleness of plan gives some unity to the whole; and, considered as discourses by a lady and an amateur, they are creditable to Mrs. Webb: but they are somewhat deficient in closeness of purpose, and rather too discursive and ejaculatory, though not more so than many sermons.] The Young Man's Home, or the Penitent Returned; a Narrative of the Pre- sent Day. By the Reverend Richard Cobbold, Rector of Wortham, and Rural Dean, Author of "The History of Margaret Catchpole," &c. [The narrative of the career of a clergyman's son. Robert Worthy is a wild young man of genius, who, misled by the flattery and attention of his school and college companions, neglects his opportunities, breaks his father's heart, squanders what he has, and after his total rum comes home to repent and die in the cottage of his old nurse, spiritually attended by his father's successor. There is nothing very new in the idea, or in its treatment. In style, tone, and object, The Young Man's Home is one of the well-intentioned didactic novels that point a religious moral by example.] The Eerie Laird; being the only authentic History of the person so called by tradition in Scotland, and of the remarkable parts enacted by him and other European Adventurers in the East Indies, during the civil wars for the throne of the Great Mogul, about the middle of the seventeenth century.
[A story designed to exhibit European adventurers in the East during the middle of the seventeenth century, when Arengzebe was on the throne as Great Mogul, and the servants of the East India Company were little more than factors. With a kind of forced naturalness, and a facility of vulgar invention, the author makes great pretensions to knowledge both of English and Indian history and manners: but all about him is coarse and literal-more husk than kernel]
Rienzi, the Last of the Roman Tribunes. By Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton Bart.
[The first volume of the cheap edition of Sir Bulwer Lytton's works, publishing in imitation of a similar undertaking by Mr. Dickens. It forms a goodly doable- columned book; but the frontispiece of Rienzi haranguing the Romans would have been as well away. The hero looks exceedingly like a masquerade Rienzi, and his auditors suggest the idea of what are called guys."] Rob Roy. In two volumes. (Waverley Novels, VII. and VIIL)
[The new issue of the "magnum opus.")
The Southern Settlements of New Zealand: comprising Statistical Informa- tion to the close of the year 1846; together with a Summary of the Local Ordinances, Proclamations, &c. From the most authentic sources. By S. E. Grimstone, Esq. [A well-arranged collection of statistics and practical information relating to the Southern district of New Zealand. But the feature of the publication is that it is the first book that has reached us from the New Zealand press; and this (happy people !) is not a very large one. The great number of births over deaths indicates a young. society; but a goodly list of legal fees, and a steady excess of expenditure over income, (except in 1842 and 1843,) show a civilized race.]
SERIAL.
The People's Library of Science and Art. Parts I. and II.
[The object of this serial undertaking is to reprint the best works of the most celebrated writers on subjects of art and science. The two parts contain De Goguet's remarkable treatise on the origin of the arts and sciences.]
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