PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

Beano.

Except from " Syria " and the " Registrar-General's Report," there is not much future promise from the following list. Five of the nine are noticed among the Books this week ; and the mass of new novels are rather calculated to maintain the state of the circulating-library than the state of the world.

Syria and the Syrians ; or Turkey in the Dependencies. By Gregory M. Wortabet, of Beyroot, Syria. In two volumes.

Sixteenth Annual Report of the Registrar-General of Births, Deaths, and Marriages, in England.

Margaret and her Bridesmaids. By the Author of " Woman's Devo- tion." In three volumes.

Maurice Elvington ; or One out of Suits with Fortune : an Autobio- graphy. Edited by Wilfrid East.

Journal of Adventures with the British Army, from the Commence- ment of the War to the Taking of Sebastopol. By George Cavendish Taylor, late 95th Regiment. In two volumes.

Pneuma, or the Wandering Soul : a Parable in Rhyme and Outline. By the Reverend W. Calvert, MA., Minor Canon of St. Paul's. Poems. By Isa.

Poems. By Edward Capern, Rural Postman, of Bideford, Devon. Shadows of the.Past. By. Lionel H. Holdreth.

The Military Organization and Administration of France. By Thomas James Thackeray, Captain, late Second Somerset Militia.—This first volume of a full exposition of the French military system is rather for the statist and military man than the general public ; and in some parts perhaps they will have to import a knowledge of the subject into the textual descriptions before they will fully realize the plans propounded to them. A large portion of the book seems as much translated as " drawn from official and other authentic sources of information" ; and is distinguished by that profuse display of exact division and subdivi- sion which characterizes French regulations, as well as by the use of tech- nical terms, which are net so clear in literal translation as they may be in French to Frenchmen. There is a great deal of information in the book; but we think, a man with a practical knowledge of the system, using this description as an occasional guide, would have produced a better ex- position than by a strict adherence to the French teats. The most in- teresting parts relate to the education, training, and modes of promotion in the French Army : but that is an affair of mere regulation. To re- quire qualification, and test it before admission or promotion, is com- petent under any system. Practically, we think the author's views ex- aggerated both as regards his paneuncs on the French system and his disparaging judgment of the English.

Letters on Military Education. By Jacob Omnium.—These letters, originally published in the Times and now collected with a preface, are the very reverse of the full and formal exposition of Captain Thackeray. With a power of penetrating to the pith of a subject, akin to that pos- sessed by Sydney Smith, Jacob Ommum looks at the reality, not at a paper account. Bringing this faculty and a strong common sense to aid an actual knowledge of the subject, he seizes upon the most striking evils that disfigure the British "Army "—that is, cavalry and infantry, apart from artillery and engineers. Illustrating these evils by argument and by instances, he traces them "upward to their spring"; he finds to be, virtually, an irresponsible Commander-in-chief. lhe anomaly that for so long destroyed the unity of the Army by dividing it into the two independent departments of Horse Guards and Ordnance, has, with some lesser anomalies, been formally removed by the new arrangement and the creation of a War Minister : still the worse anomaly remains, that this nominal head has no real power over the working of the " inny " proper. Upon this point, says Jacob, in his new preface- " It appears to me that no bicephalous administrative system can work satisfactorily, one of its heads being responsible to Parliament, whilst its other head, nominally responsible to the Crown, is virtually responsible

to nobody. • • • •

" The Commander-in-chief of the British Army must necessarily be a man of high social or political position, backed, probably, by powerful friends and family connexions. Were Lord Hardeage to find himself phy- sically or mentally unequal to the duties of his position, and resign—or were he, in the fulness of age,-to die—his successor must be chosen from, at most, five or six candidates. One or two of them would probably be Royal personages, and three or four of them Waterloo Captains or Colonels, who had during the forty years peace survived to be Generals or Field-Marshals. None of them would have had much previous practice in military adminis- tration, or in the dispensation of patronage ; all of them would be perfectly satisfied with a system which had permitted them to thrive so easily and so well.

" Yet should the individual selected as Commander-in-chief prove unfit for the position, as he very likely might, should he turn-out to be hasty, ignorant, prejudiced, or partial ; should his temper incapacitate him for har- monious cooperation with his yoke-fellow the Minister at War ; the nation would have to endure many a long year of military misgovernment before a Prime Minister could be found resolute enough to disgrace by dismissal a Prince of the Blood or a Peninsular Field-Marshal.

" Therefore, before her Majesty's Government are called upon to name a successor to Lord Hardinge, they surely would do well to consider whether it be conducive to the interest of the country that he should have any suc- cessor at all."

Now is the time to effect Army reforms, for after peace is established the subject will soon be superseded by some new topic. Jacob Omnitmi therefore has not only done good service by his letters, but a timely ser- vice by their collection.

A Copious Phraseological English-Greek Lexicon.—The names of Dr. J. W. Fradersdorff, the late Thomas Kerehever Arnold, and Henry Browne, M.A., appear on the titlepage of this dictionary. The au- thors who have contributed towards it are in reality more nu- merous. It was projectedtngby the late T. K. Arnold, as a help to those i who wished to translate Hall into Greek ; and the original idea was to base the book on the sixth edition of Rost's German-Greek Worter- buck (1847). The task of translating, adapting, and arranging that work, was undertaken by Dr. Fradersdorff. When this basis was pro- vided, Mr: Arnold, and, on the illness which ended in his death, the Re- verend Mr. Browne, proceeded to collate Rost with the German work of Franz, as well as with the French-Greek Dictionary of M. Ozaneaux ; besides assistance derived from other publications, German, French, and English. Of the final shaping about five-sevenths belong to Mr. Browne. Arnold and Fradersdorff were engaged for seven years upon their work; Mr. Browne for nearly four years upon his. He has not only contributed the largest part to the execution, but he seems to have brought to his work a thorough understanding of what is requisite to be done, and what cannot by any possibility be done. Not only are there essential differences in different languages, as well as in the manners, feelings, and modes of thought of different peoples, but the wide disparity between ancient and modern life and acquirements pro- duces still greater discrepancies ; for " it is clearly idle to suppose that the ancient Greeks had the words where they had not the things." Therefore " a complete' lexicon it does not pretend to be." So far as we have gone it appears to be a very able one ; the plan expansive from renderings by a single word, to a copious vocabulary, or a short IBM- sion ; the execution careful and discriminating. Perhaps the chief uti- lity of the book is less for writing Greek than as a means of enabling the student to better comprehend both Greek and English. The part the modern Greeks may yet play in affairs may render a facility in their ancient language more useful than the power of writing Latin.

The Geometry of the Three First Books of Euclid by direct Proof from Definitions alone. By. Hemdeigh Wedgwood, M.A., late Fellow of Christ College, Cambridge.—An attempt to base geometry on defini- tions alone, or in other words to discard axioms and propositions which are assumed or taken to be self-evident truths, instead of being proved. This effort has often been made without success ; and we think Mr. Wedgwood inclined to undervalue the cogency of the self-evident truths. However, there can be no doubt that a careful perusal of his "intro duetion on the true principles of the science " will give the geometrician, and the student who can follow him, a more enlarged and a clearer view of geometry itself.

The Practical Stenographer. By E. Soper.—The advantages claimed for this "entirely new system' are, that the alphabet contains few looped letters, that the forms of the letters are simple and easy, and that "it may be written so as to be almost as legible as ordinary writing." This last we should incline to doubt, unless perhaps while the subject was quite fresh in the writer's mind. In reality, however, short-hand depends less upon system than upon the writer's practice and natural aptitude.

Old Truths and Modern Progress. By Robert Slack, M.D.—The " progress" which Dr. Slack expounds appears to relate to the mil- lennium, as indicated in the Apocalypse and other prophetic writings. When this is to take place, or where the preliminary seat of Antichrist is to be, the Doctor is not certain. He thinks the place may be Babylon, revived by means of an extended commerce, to produce which the money spent by the belligerents in the East may contribute. This, however, is merely the final speculation : before that end is reached, the reader has to travel over a good deal of philosophical discussion and historical survey. Part of the philosophy was new once : " The proper study of mankind is man," for example, is reproduced in various ways. A good many of the illustrations, especially from subjects akin to the author's profession, are somewhat fresher, but their bearing upon the conclusion is not always clear.

_Pyrrhus the Epirote ; an Historical Tragedy. By Frederick William Howes, F.R.S.L., &c.—The features in the eventful life of ry.t.hus which Mr. Howes has selected for dramatizing, are his marriage with Antigone, while an exile in Egypt, and the conspiracy of Neoptolemus after the re- establishment of Pyrrhus on his throne. The author seems to entertain a doubt as to the dramatic connexion of the marriage with the conspiracy. He might have extended this doubt further, as to whether either occur- rence was adapted for dramatic action. But it is no matter—the author does not rise even to the poetical feeling of a dramatic poem.

Boadieea's History; a Dramatic Chronicle. By Henry M. Pearson.— The title indicates the subject of Mr. Pearson's drama. In point of mere poetical merit it is about on a par with _Pyrrhus : to talk of drainatie power in either case would be idle.

The Pirates of the Mississippi. By Frederick Gerstrecker.—A cheap edition of a translation of Gerstmeker's melodramatic picture of the wild, violent, and criminal men by whom the earlier settlers on the Mississippi and its adjacent waters were disturbed and injured till the piratical bands were rooted out.

NEW Smusr..

The History of France from the E'ar'liest Period to the Present Time. By Thomas Wright, Esq., M.A., &c.—A compilation to be published in the oldfashioned mode of numbers. The first part, beginning with the ancient Gauls, comes down to the time of Dagobert.