CURRENT LITERATURE.

Seekers after God. By the Rev. F. W. Farrar, M.A. (Macmillan.)— By "seekers after God" Mr. Farrar means those who, unassisted by tho light of revelation, have "devoted themselves to the earnest search after those truths which might best make their lives 'beautiful before God.'" He selects as his examples Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. Two of these three, for Seneca, as Mr. Farrar frankly acknowledges, stands on a lower level, were among the noblest of those who, "having not the law, were a law unto themselves ;" but there is a reason of special significance for choosing them for this purpose. They all had what would be called an opportunity of receiving the Christian faith, and they agreed in refusing to avail themselves of it ; Aurelius was, in the person of his lieutenants, actually a persecutor. They would be held, therefore, in the judgment of many persons to have incurred the condemnation from which absolute ignorance is allowed to constitute an exemption. Mr. Farrar in his chapter on "Seneca and St. Paul" puts the real state of the case very well. The barrier between a philosophical Roman's habit of thought and the Gospel of Christ was as impassable as any barrier of physical separation ; St. Paul recognized the fact in his repeated assertions that the faith which he preached must triumph by working up from beneath. It is a subject which must always have a more than historical importance as long as we are confronted by the difficult problem of the relation between Christianity and the nonChristian populations of the world. Mr. Farrar's book supplies reading which is not only profitable, but also in the highest degree interesting. We were never more disposed to congratulate the young, whose " Sunday reading," one of the dreariest recollections of youth to many persons, is now so plentifully provided for. As to the matter of the volume, we can honestly say that we did not come across a single page which we were disposed to skip ; yet, perhaps, a more rigid concentration on his subject would have enabled Mr. Farrar to give us that fuller account of Seneca's writings which, it seems, the limits of his volume prohibited. The style, as Mr. Farrar's readers will expect to hear, challenges considerable criticism. In one respect it is appropriate to the subject, for it has a resemblance to the Latinity of the Silver age. Such a phrase as "the ambitious turbulence of the crowds which thronged the Forum" may illustrate our meaning. We notice a slight error in p. 68. Tacitus's "shuddering recollection of the red face of Domitian" was not "as it looked on at the games," but as he had soon it in the Senate.

St. George's Key. By W. E. Coghlau, B.A. (Warne.)—Here the scene is laid in British Honduras. The author has taken considerable pains to give the local colouring with faithfulness, and, as far as we can judge, has succeeded. But we cannot praise his style, which is often extraordinarily stiff. Fancy an old Colonel beginning a tale of past adventure with such a phrase as "before the strokes of time and trouble had marked my strong-built frame"! The Boy Cavaliers, by the Rev. H. C. Adams, M.A., is a tale of the Civil War, in which tho sympathies of the reader are enlisted on the Royalist side. This no one will complain of ; it probably suits nine boys out of ten. But justice might be done nevertheless. It is scarcely fair to represent the Roundhead leader as torturing his prisoner. There never was a civil war which was fought out with less cruelty. Our Fresh and Salt-Water 7'utors, by W. G. H. Kingston. (Sampson Low.) Mr. Kingston, an old friend of the boys, adapts an American story of sea-side life, with its various pleasures of boating, fishing, &c. The tale is pleasant enough, and will not be the leas liked because it ends with an adventure, an attack and repulse of pirates, which is not likely to occur to our young friends when they visit tho sea. The Boy Forester, by Anne Bowman (Routledgo), is a tale of how a lad and his sisters fared in the forest in the days of Richard I., one of the numberless books of the Robinson Cruse° class of which boys never can have enough. The Vendale Lost Property Office, by the Author of Copsley Annals, Scc. (Seeley); a pleasant story, with some genuine humour of a quiet kind which both the children and their elders may enjoy. The adventures of Susie and Johnny, when they are carried off by a railway train, are, for instance, capitally told. holidays at Llandudno and Owen Carstone, by the same author, Algy's Lesson, by S. E. de Morgan, A Month at Ashfield Farm, The Hop Garden (Cassell and Co.), describe life at the sea, the lakes, in London, and in the country, and will please young people of a realistic turn who like to read about what they know. Lost in Paris, by Edwin Hodder .(Hodder and Stoughton), is the title of a volume of little tales, and which point a moral more or less grave, as, for instance, that a boy ought to learn French. They are told with spirit. Lily and Nannie at School, by Annie J. Buckland (Cassell and Co.), is a tale for little girls which we hops will do them all the good that it is intended to do. Cloud Land and Shadow Land, by J. Thackray Bunco, and Mince Pie Island, by R. St. John Corbet (Cassell and Co.), are two books which are as like as twins, though they appear not to have the same parentage. Both are specimens of the extravagant fancy of which "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" are the type. Neither of them seems to be very happily executed. Miss Corner provides the young people with two more of her Little Plays for Little Actors—Cinderella and Whittington and Ms Cat (Dean and Son). The Story of the Kings of Israel and .Tudah, written for children by A. 0. B., (Nimmo), describes itself sufficiently. It has illustrations of fair merit.

Elementary Geometry. Part I. Compiled by J. W. Wilson, MA. (Macmillan.) Modern Methods in Elementary Geometry. By E. M. Reynolds, M.A. (Macmillan.) The Elements of Plane Geometry. By Richard P. Wright. (Longmans.)—These throe books indicate the existence of very serious discontent with the generally accepted system of teaching geometry, a discontent at which few of those practically acquainted with the subject will be surprised. Nothing can be conceived more monotonously dreary than the ordinary Euclid lesson, nothing even among the most absurd pedantries of classical teaching is commonly more barren of results. Whether we have an effective substitute for the long-established text-book in these modern rivals, and what their merits are as regards each other, it is impossible to say without practical experience. All of them have the merit of substituting some more compendious method for much that strikes us as verbose and tedious in Euclid. Mr. Wilson gives the substance of the first two books in 80 pages ; Mr. Reynolds goes further, and compresses the first six into 112. There is another feature in all which is worthy of praise, the early introduction of exercises. It requires a long course of Euclid before a "deduction" can be set with any hope of success; and even then it will be solved only by a very few of the most intelligent pupils. Whether these " exercises " have a more practical value we cannot say without a trial ; but we are inclined to augur well of a system which recognizes their necessity. .

Contrast ; or, the Schoolfelloivs. By Reline Lee. (Smith, Elder, and Co.)—The " contrast " is between George Marsden, known at school and in afterlife as "Chump," the man of action, and John Fronde, the man of contemplation. There is no doubt to which the balance of the author's preference inclines, or which she describes with the greater success. "Chump" is a capital sketch of character, full of vigour, more of a real "man" than women often succeed in drawing. The self-made man "Sir George," the old-world farmer Wade, and the charming little Rosy, who is the prize of victory, are all well described. The picture of John Fronde is a much more difficult task, and the writer cannot be said to have achieved an equal success in it. She does not fail from narrowness or want of sympathy, but simply because the work is too much for any but the greatest powers. Very large knowledge and supreme skill are needed to describe the processes by which belief passes into doubt. One difficulty is this ; if the doubts that actually occur to the thinker are stated, we find ourselves between the Scylla of controversy and the Charybdis of apparent scepticism, which we approach according as wo determine to answer or not to answer them. Holme Lee writes, as usual, in a pleasant and graceful style.

Post-Office London Directory, 1869. (London: Frederick Kelly, 12 Carey Street, Lincoln's Inn, W.C.)—This useful directory, which every year becomes fuller and more accurate, and therefore more gigantic, has been brought down to the date of the new Ministry's taking office, though containing only the earliest appointments made, i.e., about ten out of the fifteen members of the Cabinet. Though one of the most useful and laborious and valuable works of the year, it is not one which will admit of extract, nor even of lengthened criticism, and the length of our notice of it therefore is necessarily in inverse proportion to its merits.

Sink or Swim? By the Author of Recommended to Mercy. 3 vols. (Tinsley.)—At the conclusion of this work the writer informs us that

there is no crime related in these volumes, no commandment has been ostensibly and boldly broken." True ; yet the heroine is dangerously near a breach of the Seventh daring a great portion of the tale, which we are told is `..‘ half-true." We very much doubt whether it can be said to be even "half" moral; but it certainly is wholly tedious, spun out to an intolerable length, and unrelieved by any brilliancy of thought or grace of diction. One personage indeed, Lady Millicent, is very well drawn ; but she is so utterly repulsive that we cannot feel any sympathy with the creation even as a work of art. The want of a really good moral is sometimes compensated more or less imperfectly by what is called "poetical justice." Even that we do not get. The wicked people escape scot free, while the innocent suffer. Recommended to Mercy belonged to a bad class of novels, and we cannot place Sink or Swim anywhere else.

Haydn's Dictionary of Dates. Thirteenth Edition, corrected to June, 1868. By Benjamin Vincent. (Moxon).—A book which has reached a thirteenth edition can dispense with praise, and may be indifferent to blame. To those who do not know Haydn's Dictionary we may say that it is a wonderful compendium of human knowledge, that its title insufficiently describes it, it being rather, as the editor puts it in his preface, "a dated cyclopasclia, a digested summary of every department of human history;" and, finally, that the announcement of its being corrected up to a very late date which we see on the title-page, is far more truthful than some similar statements that we have soon in books of the kind. We have tested it on points where we happened to be well-informed, and have found it both accurate and complete. If it is faulty at all, it is in the department of ancient history, where it makes statements which scarcely snit modern criticism. What, for instance, can be the use of telling us that "bucklers are said to have been invented by Prcetus and Acrisius of Argos about 1370 B.O." ?

The Doctor's 1Var4 by the Author of the Four Sisters (Routledge), is we are told, a tale for girls, which, we venture to prophesy, they will read at first with much interest and with eyes not always dry ; will "vote rather slow," if they have learnt that phrase, in the middle ; and will declare to have a most charming end. But they must remember that it is, on the most liberal calculation, but one doctor in throe who is so unexceptionably handsome and good as Dr. Raymond. The Adventures of Hans Sterk, by Captain A. W. Drayson, B.A. (Griffith and Ferran), is, on the other hand, a tale for boys, with some hunting and much fighting in it, all told with spirit. The scene of the story is laid in South Africa, and the adventures narrated are mainly real incidents which occurred in the migration by which, as we understand the author, the Orange River Free State was founded. The book is quite worthy the attention of older readers.

Acadian Geology. By John William Dawson, M.A. Second Edition, revised and enlarged. (Macmillan.)--For many years Dr. Dawson has devoted special attention to the geology of Acadia (Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island), and has contributed to different

periodicals numerous memoirs on the mineralogical and stratigraphical structure of that region. The fossil contents of the beds have been made a particular subject of study by our author, who has been remarkably successful in the discovery and elucidation of the various remains. of the several formations. One of the principal features of this volume. is the series of drawings and restorations of the plants which have contributed to form the coal of America as well as of England. From thesepictures even the popular reader may gain a clear notion of those remarkable extinct giants of a race now represented by some of the humblest and smallest members of the vegetable kingdom.

Religion and Duty. Discourses by Charles Clarke. (Whitfield).— Mr. Clarke would, as we gather from his discourses, object to be labelled by any name, but he may be most fitly described as an Unitarian. He writes ably and voll, but does not carry us away by any vivid power of language or thought. It is not often that we are inclined to disagree,. though we have found passages in which we cannot but thinklhim mistaken. It may be true, for instance, that "the Apostle Paul in an eminent degree had tact," and it may also be true that "tact means caution," but we cannot allow that "tact also means coldness of blood and feeble inspiration," and there is something ludicrous in Mr. Clarke's adding, "I do not blame the Apostle Paul. He was equal to any sacrifice that could be required of him." We have not observed that "to beequal to any sacrifice" belongs to "coldness of blood and feeble inspiration." This, however, is an exception to Mr. Clarke's ordinary sound sense and judgment.

Nellie's Memories. By Rosa Nottchette Carey. 3 vols. (Tinsley.)— A chronicle of domestic life, over long (a criticism which we are weary of repeating), for the close print really extends it beyond the customary three volumes, but quite readable nevertheless. The smooth tenor of things is sometimes interrupted by startling incidents which, on the whole, we would gladly dispense with. For instance, we do not think the book improved by the story of the Rev. Mr. Clive, who falls wildly in love with a young lady while his wife is yet alive in a lunatic asylum. The merit of the book lies in the quiet, harmonious tones of its pictures. Such things spoil like a discord in music. Another interruption, very different from this, but alike in its extravagance, is when the heroine has a large fortune left to her away from the expectant heir. Even a lady novelist ought to know that such a matter cannot be setright by the summary process of tearing up the will. But there are no faults in the book that would hinder us from giving it our recommendation.

Punch's Pocket-Book for 1869. (Punch Office.)—The coloured illustration represents "A Ladies' Cricket Club," and the new rules necessitated by the sex of the players are given in the literary part of the Pocket-Book. Instead of leg before wicket there is to be ancle before,. and "personalities, such as long-leg, short-leg, square-leg, are on no account to be mentioned." We seem to recognize the style of Happy Thoughts in a "Model Day at Brighton," and there are good contributions to domestic, prematrimonial, and mellilunar literature. The drama called the " Wopps " is especially amusing, and so, too, are "Marriage on Moderate Terms" and " liarmaduke's Wedding Trip."" The practical part of the Pocket-Book is perhaps rather more incongruous when compared with the special features to which we are accustomed. We scarcely expect Mr. Punch to find us the "Sunday Lessons," or to remind us that if we don't pay our fire insurance by a certain day it will become void. But then the comic part makes us buy the practical part, and the practical part makes us keep the comic, so. that two ends are answered.

What Should JITe Drink? By J. L. Denman. (Longmans.)—Mr. Denman gives to this question a very emphatic answer that we should drink Greek wines. We acknowledge their merit, though we have a personal prejudice in favour of claret either of the costliest or of the cheapest. The Greek vintages are unquestionably genuine. Another generation may very possibly be educated into liking them thoroughly, and the Greeks may make an improvement, for which there is certainly room, in the process of manufacture.

The Loves of Rase Pink and Sky Blue. By William Francis Collier, LL.D. (Nimmo.)—The first story in this collection is rather pretty, but the whole is below the average.