comparatively few are aware of the wealth of biography, history, and anecdote which this scope embraces. Mrs. Conant has shown herself fully adequate to the task. Her work includes full and detailed memoirs of Wickliffe and Tyndale, with sketches of the leading characteristics and personages of their respective times. Her style is clear, vigorous, and sprightly, glowing with the enthusiasm inspired by her subject, and gracefully adapting itself to the moods of feeling created by the varying fortunes of the Divine Word and its translators and propagators, now under the ban of the hierarchy, now on the career of progress and triumph, and through alternating pulses and waves of light and darkness slowly advancing from the dawn to the unclouded day of Scriptural knowledge and religious freedom.

28. BACON'S Essays: with Annotations by RICHARD WHATELY, D. D., Archbishop of Dublin. From the Second London Edition, revised. New York: C. S. Francis & Co. 1857. 8vo. pp. 536.

THE Essay of Bacon's time was not a finished treatise, but the jotting down of fragmentary thoughts; and Bacon's Essays, though among the most suggestive writings of any age, have probably left on the mind of every reader a sense of incompleteness. They were seed-corn, which has germinated in harvests of varying quality according to the nature of the recipient soil. Their product in such an intellect as Whately's is well worth our study. The work before us grew from a series of annotations and appropriate extracts commenced for his own private use. It has the merit of grouping around the great variety of topics discussed in the original series a collection of the ripest and best thoughts of a master thinker, whose range of speculation and knowledge seems almost fabulous, yet who is never superficial, never a copyist, and whose capacity of putting other minds in action has hardly found its parallel since Bacon's lifetime.

29.1. Poems. By CHARLES SWAIN. Boston: Whittemore, Niles, and Hall. 1857. 16mo. pp. 304.

2. The Poetical Works of GERALD MASSEY. Boston: Ticknor and Fields. 1857. 16mo. pp. 301.

It is a unique feature of our times, that, of the English and American poets who hold the first place in the universal esteem, and who are the

inspired exponents of their age, the greater part are in active, busy, care-cumbered life, Bryant, the editor of a daily paper; Sprague, a high-priest in the temple to which access was of old peremptorily forbidden to the dwellers upon Parnassus; Swain and Massey, bound down from early boyhood to engrossing and grovelling toil. Charles Swain was apprenticed to a dyer at fifteen, and at twenty-nine became, and still is, an engraver. His poems are distinguished by smooth and easy versification, pure, gentle, and devout thought, and the appropriation the secretion, we might say, by a faculty peculiarly his-of ornament and imagery from scenes and incidents of common life which to an ordinary mind could suggest no poetical association. The ethical beauty of his verses constitutes with us their highest charm. There is hardly a piece which does not embody some precept of personal or social duty. Contentment, cheerfulness, mutual forbearance and helpfulness, kind construction, charitable judgment, pity for the erring, compassion for the poor, these are among the lessons which, with a frequent sameness of thought, yet with an always fresh flow from the vein of an affluent fancy, are perpetually reappearing in the delightful little volume in blue and gold, which, we are glad to see, has been published on this side of the Atlantic with his concurrence, and in part for his benefit.

In a similar style of mechanical execution we have the poems of Gerald Massey, pre-eminently the poet of the people. He was born in a hovel, and his father, a canal-boatman, was and still is the earner of ten shillings a week. After a few months at a penny school below the grade of our primary schools, he was sent at eight years of age to work in a silk-mill. When the mill was burned down, he labored at strawplaiting. At fifteen, he was an errand-boy in London, previously to which time his reading had been confined to the Bible, Pilgrim's Progress, Robinson Crusoe, and a few Wesleyan tracts. He now commenced reading at book-stalls, and often deprived himself of food to purchase cheap books. His first poems bear date at a very early period of his life in London. His versification is not so smooth as Swain's; but it is full of vigor, and surcharged with the fire equally of poetic enthusiasm and of indignation at the social inequalities and wrongs under which he has suffered so intensely. In many of his poems there is a Titanic strength; in some of them, an unsurpassed beauty both of thought and diction. His mastery of the resources of his native tongue is amazing. Notwithstanding the seeming meagreness of his culture, he has at his free command a very wide range of imagery, as well that derived from books, and, one hardly knows how, from nature, as that which bears the birth-mark no less than the coinage-stamp of

his own genius. He is but twenty-nine years of age, and should his growth for the next ten years equal that of the last ten, we cannot easily say how high a place he may reach, and hold for all coming time, in the catalogue of the British poets.

30. Central Africa. Adventures and Missionary Labors in several Countries in the Interior of Africa, from 1849 to 1856. By T. J. BOWEN. Charleston: Southern Baptist Publication Society. 1857. 12mo. pp. 359.

The

THIS work comes to hand just as we are preparing our last instalment of copy for the press. It deserves such a notice as it is impossible for us now to give, and we may recur to it in some future number. It commences with a brief recapitulation of earlier and later researches in Africa, then proceeds to a detailed account of the present condition of Liberia and its inhabitants, and then passes to Yoruba, the chief seat of the author's missionary labors, a country whose southern boundary is about eighty miles north of the Bight of Benin. geography, plants, animals, ethnology, language, manners, traditions, religion, and government of this previously almost unknown region constitute the subjects of the greater part of the volume. This is another of the very numerous instances in which an enterprise of Christian philanthropy is rendering back to its birth-land and the civilized world a rich tribute of rare and valuable scientific and statistical knowledge. We doubt whether the funds of the Smithsonian Institution could in any other way so surely subserve the testator's purpose of "diffusing knowledge among men," as by being appropriated to the support of foreign missionaries. Certainly, without aid from government, more of curious, and accurate, and valuable information as to all that concerns nature and man has emanated from our American missionaries since Smithson's bequest became available, than has been given to the world from the income of that noble endowment.

NOTE TO ARTICLE III.

SINCE this article was written, intelligence has been received of the death, at Beirut, of that eminent scholar, Rev. Eli Smith, D. D., who, amid the incessant labors of his calling as a missionary, was yet able to contribute as much as any man of his age to Sacred Geography and

Philology. It is worthy of emphatic remark, that these departments of knowledge have received more aid from devoted and earnest missionaries than from all other classes of inquirers, their world-renowned professors having derived the choicest materials for their master-works of scholarly diligence from the observations and researches of those self-denying philanthropists.

NEW PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

Third Report of the Commissioners for the Exhibition of 1851, to the Right Honorable Sir George Grey, Bart., &c., &c., one of Her Majesty's Principal Secretaries of State. London. 1856. 8vo. pp. 273.

Twelfth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Public Schools in Rhode Island. Made to the General Assembly, at its January Session, A. D. 1857. By Robert Allyn, Commissioner of Public Schools. Providence. 1857. 8vo. Pp. 108.

Fourth Annual Report of the Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Agriculture, with accompanying Documents, for the Year 1856. Boston. 1857. 8vo. pp. 351.

Eighth Report of the Ministry at Large in Roxbury. Roxbury. 1857. Fourteenth Annual Report of the Managers of the State Lunatic Asylum. Albany. 1857.

Nineteenth Annual Report of the School Committee of the Town of Brighton, for 1856-57. Cambridge. 1857.

A Report of the Decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F. A. Sanford. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1857.

The Historical Magazine, and Notes and Queries concerning the Antiquities, History, and Biography of America. Vol. I. Nos. 1-3. Boston. C. Benjamin Richardson.

No. 30. Orkney. — No. 31. 1857.

Harper's Story-Books. No. 29. Lapstone. Judge Justin. New York: Harper & Brothers. Fleurs d'Amerique. Poésies Nouvelles, par Dominique Rouquette. New Orleans. 1857. 8vo. pp. 303.

Arguments of the Counsel of Trinity Church, before the Senate Committee. Albany. 1857.

The Cerographic Missionary Atlas. New York: Sidney Morse & Co.

Has Oude been worse governed by its native Princes than our Indian Territories by Leadenhall Street? By Malcolm Lewis, Esq., late Second Judge of the Suddr Court of Madras. London: James Ridgway. 1857.

Information for Kanzas Immigrants. Prepared by Thomas H. Webb, Secretary of the New England Emigrant Aid Co. Boston. 1857.

Report of the Proceedings at the Annual Meeting of the Massachusetts His

torical Society. Address of Hon. Robert C. Winthrop, and the Remarks of Hon. Edward Everett, with a Description of the Dowse Library. Boston. 1857.

Statistical Details respecting the Republic of Lubeck, compared with those of some other European States. By the Rev. R. Everest, A. M.

The Canada Educational Directory and Calendar for 1857-58; containing an Account of the Schools, Colleges, and Universities; the Professions; Scientific and Literary Institutions; Decisions of the Courts on School Questions, &c. Edited by Thomas Hodgins, B. A., Univ. Coll., Toronto. Toronto: Maclear & Co. 1857. 8vo. pp. 142.

&c.,

The Night of Freedom. An Appeal, in Verse, against the great Crime of our Country, Human Bondage. By William Wallace Hebbard. Boston. 1857.

Festival of the Connecticut Association, at the Revere House, Boston, January 14, 1857. With the Constitution, Officers, and Members of the Association. Boston. 1857.

The Euphrates Valley Route to India. An Examination of the Memoir published by Mr. W. P. Andrew, F. R. G. S. By two Travellers, Authors of "Nothing in Particular." London. 1857.

A Sermon preached at the Ordination of George E. Sanborne as Pastor of the Church, Georgia, Vermont, January 1, 1857. By Rev. Lyman Whiting, Pastor of the North Church, Portsmouth, N. H. Portsmouth. 1857. Jesus and Jerusalem: or Christ the Saviour and Civilizer of the World. A Discourse preached before the Benevolent Fraternity of Churches, on Sunday Evening, April 12, 1857, in Behalf of the Ministry at Large. By C. A. Bartol. Cambridge. 1857.

The Voice of Twenty Years. A Discourse preached in the West Church on the First day of March, being the Twentieth Anniversary of his Ordination, by C. A. Bartol, Junior Pastor. Boston. 1857. No Connivance with Iniquity. Baptist Church, Meriden, Conn. 1857.

A Sermon delivered March 8, 1857, in the
By George D. Henderson. Meriden.

Youths Void of Understanding. A Discourse delivered in the Twelfth Congregational Church, Boston, on the First Sunday of March. By Samuel Barrett, Minister of that Church. Boston: Crosby, Nichols, & Co. 1857. The Christian Duty of Patriotism. A Sermon preached in the First Church in Watertown, on Fast Day, April 16, 1857. By George Bradford. Boston.

1857.

A Discourse delivered in the Church of the First Parish in Dedham, February 8, 1857, the Sunday after the Funeral of Hon. John Endicott. By Alvan Lamson, D. D., Pastor of the First Church. Boston: Crosby, Nichols, & Co. 1857.

An Historical Discourse in Commemoration of the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Formation of the First Congregational Church in Templeton, Massachusetts. With an Appendix, embracing a Survey of the Municipal Affairs of the Town. By Edwin G. Adams, Junior Pastor. Boston: Crosby, Nichols, & Co. 1857. 8vo. pp. 175.