PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

The .d.fricass at Home: being a Popular Description of Africa and the Africans, condensed from the Accounts of African Travellers from

the Time of Mango Park to the Present Time. By the Rev. It. M.

Macbriar, M.A. Longman and Co.—The nature of this handy. little book is fairly indicated by its title. It presents a bird's-eye view of

the geography, physical characteristics, inhabitants, and natural history of Africa, in the form of an imaginary tour across the continent and along its borders, in various directions, from Abyssinia and the skirts of the Great Desert to the confines of the Cape colony. Mr. Macbriar is the author of the Mandiugo and Fools Grammars, and he has himself visited both the east and west sides of Africa, a fact on which he justly relies as enhancing his qualifications for the compilation

of a work like the present. We think he states the case too strongly when he asserts that no one could have written this book without having

previously visited Africa, and we cannot see how a residence on the

coast could add much to a man's power of portraying at secondhand the city and people of Timbuctu, or the dwellers on the banks of Lake Tanganyaki Still it is to be presumed that Mr. Macbriar's personal experiences have been of considerable help. to him in the execution of his task, and at all events it must be admitted that he has performed it well.

Vowed the Dane : Count of Elsinore. Two volumes. London : Bentley.—The author of this novel tells us that it is the work of an Englishman who has "sojourned in Denmark, and that it originally appeared in the pages of the Dublin University Magazine. It is the

story, far more complicated than interesting, of a Danish noble, who is outlawed, of course unjustly, and who taking to the sea, carries on

a system of reprisals against the King of Denmark by seizing, govern-

ment property wherever he can find it to the exact amount of the in- come arising from his confiscated estates. He is very careful never to take a penny in excess, and in order to avoid doing so, he keeps cor-

rect accounts of his plunder, which are regularly audited by his officers. As he never touches merchant vessels, he flatters himself

that he is not a pirate. The adventures of this noble creature are nar- rated in detail, and, as may be imagined, some of them are of a rather exciting character. The book is a singular jumble of quasi-history and melodramatic incidents, written in the spasmodic style, and copiously besprinkled with scraps of undeniable Danish.

The Massacres in Syria. By J. Lewis Farley. Bradbury and Evans. —These letters are all dated. from Constantinople, between the months

of July and September, 1860, both inclusive. The author has, there. fore, no new testimony to offer as an eye-witness of the events he discusses, nor is there reason to believe that his residence in the Sul- tan's capital has given him any advantage in point of accuracy and

fulness of information, which he might not have equally enjoyed in London ; but he has lived among the races of whom he writes, and has had many opportunities of knowinc, a good deal of them, as he has shown in a former work of his, wo Years in Syria." For this

reason he deems himself better qualified than the majority of his countrymen, including her Majesty's Ministers and the Members of both Houses of Parliament, to sum up the evidence in the case and deliver a just verdict. His finding is wholly in favour of the Maronites. They have been innocent victims from first to last. The Druses were

the aggressors, and their aggression was long premeditated. For two years before the great outbreak they had been continually persecuting, the Christians in detail by acts of fraud, extortion, robbery, and

murder, themselves affecting all the while to be averse to war, while goadig on the Christians to attack them in self-defence. In support of this conclusion Mr. Farley cites the testimony of Mr.

Cyril Graham, guaranteed by Lord Dufferin, who tells the Foreign Secretary that he "may rely with implicit confidence on the ac-

curacy of all Mr. Graham's statements of fact, as his knowledge of Arabic, and his personal acquaintance both with the Druse and Murointe populations, combined with the opportunities he has had of visiting the places where these tragedies have occurred, will have given

him peculiar facilities for. arriving the truth." Mr. Graham's written statement to theBritish Commissioner, on the 18th of July last,

was that the Druses were the first aggressors." Mr. Farley traces all the inhuman violence which has afflicted Syria during the last twenty years to the mistake which was made in 1840, in deposing the Emir Beschir, under whose strong hand the Mountain tribes had long enjoyed peace and prosperity. He holds it to be utterly impossible for the Druses and Maronites to dwell together in harmony under any system of government which the Porte can supply, and therefore he would have them separated. The Christian population of Mount

Lebanon amounts to 170,000, while the Druses there are i only 28,000, the bulk of their race being settled in the "Laurin, where there is room enough for them all, and where those of the Mountain could easily establish themselves with the purchase-money of their lands, which should be raised by equitable assessments upon the Maronites. Then the Lebanon should be placed under the rule of a Christian governor, with an armed force, capable of protecting the people under his juris- diction. The Christians of Syria demand the immediate creation of an exclusively Christian army, by means of conscription, at the rate of two thousand men a year, so that at the end of fifteen years there may be ten thousand regular troops under arms, with a reserve of twenty thousand. Mr. Farley declares that there is nothing exorbitant in these demands, and that unless they are complied with there can be no security for the Syrian Christians. Physico-Prophetical Essays on the Locality of the Eternal Inheritance, its Nature and Character, the Resurrection Body, the Mutual Recogni- tion of Glorified Saints. By the Rev. W. Lister, F.G.S. Longman and Co.—Inscribed in capital letters at the head of this book is New- ton's famous phrase, "Hypotheses non fingo," a motto which could not, without most ludicrous unfitness, be prefixed to any of the apocalyptic romances of the Cummings, McCauslands, Stanley Fabers, and the rest of that school. Truly does Mr. Lister say of these ffastic interpreters, that they have played such tricks with the subject of prophecy as have " rendered even its very name distasteful to sober-minded men, who have, perhaps, only occasionally directed their attention to it, and who have therefore seen little more than the fanciful interpretations which have been given to many of the expres- sions of Scripture, and which have made them feel that the language of the Bible may, in this way, be made to mean almost anything which a lively fancy can suggest, and that anything like certainty with regard to its meaning is not to be expected." He himself adopts an entirely different method, and his work, he believes, may be said to be in some respects the first of its kind, having in it little or nothing that is imaginative or speculative, or merely hypothetical. Its topics have been drawn directly and solely from Scripture, and its conclusions have not been sought intentionally, otherwise than by the strict path of demonstration. Of the two recognized methods of prophetical interpretation—the Figurative and the Literal—Mr. Lister adopts the latter only in the present volume. Its use, he thinks, should be the rule, and that of the opposite method the exception, and he has specially chosen for discussion a range of subjects among which such exceptions do not present themselves. Having then determined the meaning of a given prophecy, he has next endeavoured to view the things predicted, when of a physical nature, in the light of legitimate science, and to explain them by examples drawn from actual nature, either past or present. For instance, he draws largely on geology and physical astronomy for illustrations of the nature of the transformed earth, without a sea, where, and not in heaven, he fixes the eternal abode of all the redeemed. He adverts to the increase of habitable space, which will be obtained by the absence of the sea which now covers more than three-fifths of the surface of the globe, and the mach greater gain in this respect which would ensue should the density of the earth become equal to that of some other planets—to that of Saturn, for instance, which is about eight times less than that of the earth—which latter he gives reason for believing to have been far less at one time than it is now, and to have been increased by the cooling and contraction of the crust. His reasonings of this kind, whatever be their force and conclusiveness, are generally based upon sound scientific data, but not invariably so, for he talks of an ammating or vital principle of animal bodies, a thing which all biologists know to be a mere figment and not an entity.

The Roll of the Royal College qf Physicians of London; compiled from the Annals of the College, andfrom other Authentic Sources. By William Munk, M.D. Vol. I. Longman and Co.—This volume contains in complete series the names with biographical notices of all the members of the College from its foundation in 1518 to the year 1700. A second and concluding volume will bring the record down to the passing of the Medical Act in the present reign. The work was not origily intended for publication, but compiled by Dr. Munk for his own satisfaction, and presented by him in manuscript to the College, where it was deposited in the library. After it had remained there four or five years it was resolved that it should be printed at the expense of the College, with all the improvements and additions, the latter amounting to a third part of the whole work, which the lapse of time and the aid of many of his colleagues enabled Dr. Munk to make in it. The work, therefore, carries with it the highest war- ranty of its sound and careful elaboration.

Collieries and Colliers : a Handbook of the Law and Leading Cases relating thereto. By John Coke Fowler, Esq., Barrister-at-Law, &c. Longman and Co.—This work is intended chiefly for the guidance of non-professional persons in the many important transactions connected with collieries, which are effected without professional aid. The author's experience as stipendiary magistrate for the district of Merthyr Tydfil and Aberdare must have enabled him to form a tolerably exact conception of the kind of legal information most needed by those for whom he has written; and besides this, he has taken the precaution to submit certain parts of his work, which deal with pecu- liarly ticklish questions, to gentlemen distinguished for their great practical knowledge of colliery operations, whose suggestions he has carefully considered.

A Treatise on the Steam Engine in its various Applications to Hines, Mills, Steam Navigation and Railways, Agriculture, 4-c. 4-c. By John Bourne. Being the Fifth Edition of " A Treatise on the Steam Engine" by the "Artisan Club." Longman and Co.—The first edition of this great work was brought out in monthly parts in 1846, with many imperfec- tions which were clearly discerned by the editor, but which were made inevitable by the mode of publication and by other circumstances. These defects, however, were so compensated by novel and sterling quali- ties, that the book at once commended itself to the favour of practical men, and has retained it ever since. The present edition is to a great extent a new work, cleared of the faults which disfigured the original, and retaining only those parts of it which continue to represent the present state of the topics of which they treat. Mr. Bourne himself is satisfied with it, and what better praise can it have than that ? " If" he says, " this work is to be superseded by a better one, it must be written by some other person than me, for, upon the whole, it is as good a' work as I am able to write on this subject." The publishers may speak to the same purpose as to their part in the production of this handsome quarto, with its elaborate tables, its thirty-seven plates, and five hundred and forty-six woodcuts. We suppose it is impossible that in the present state of the arts it could have been got up in a more appropriate or satisfactory manner.