known the slenderness of the grounds on which he would finally be compelled to justify them, he still retains a slight remnant of censure in the revised pages. We have been interested in the perusal of his judgments and comments upon matters on which, of course, we must look with eyes different from his own. We have no intentional unfairness to lay to his charge. On the contrary, we think he must have occasionally set aside a prejudice, and found in the dictates of charity an honorable explanation of what would have easily admitted of a bad construction. His History seems to be estimated more highly here than in England.

Chronicles selected from the Originals of Cartaphilus, the Wandering Jew. Embracing a Period of nearly Nineteen Centuries. Now first revealed to, and edited by, DAVID HOFFMAN, Hon. J. U. D. of Göttingen. [In two series, each of three volumes.] Series the First. London : Thomas Bosworth. 1853. 8vo. pp. 687, 606.

OFTEN as the legend of the Wandering Jew has been wrought over in literature, and various as have been the forms into which it has been cast, it has found a somewhat novel treatment in these bulky volumes, which, it seems, embrace but a third part of the proposed work. Doubtless, one who takes the books in hand will have first of all to overcome a natural consternation at their size and solidity. But when it is discovered that they deal with authentic history, and use the ubiquitous presence and the continuous biography of the legendary wanderer as a thread on which to hang the facts scattered through many narratives, a reader will conclude to accept their contents for themselves, and to find an impulse to attention in some charm wrought by the element of fiction. A slight but sufficiently definite sketch of the original legend, and of some of its variations, introduces the work, and the opening of the narrative affords an opportunity for rehearsing the earthly life and ministry of Christ under a somewhat peculiar form. The method then pur sued by the author allows him a large variety of shapes and materials by which to elaborate from the classics, and other ancient lore, and from a restoration of past scenes and characters, a continuous story full of instruction elevated by piety.

INTELLIGENCE.

LITERARY INTELLIGENCE.

Beecher's Conflict of Ages. - In our extended examination of this remarkable and most honest production of a noble-minded man, we signified that we should watch with great interest the appearance of such reviews of it as should deal with it in a spirit conformed to its own candor of argument. Some very able criticisms upon it have already appeared in the papers and other journals of some of the religious denominations. The Universalist Quarterly gives us a very brilliant and well-reasoned article upon it, while the Christian Review, a Baptist Quarterly, which does honor to the denomination it represents, devotes some well-filled pages to a generous and skilful dealing with a portion of Dr. Beecher's positions, and the Freewill Baptist Quarterly meets the author's theory with a very vigorous statement of the strength and the weakness of its various elements. Dr. Beecher himself was till recently one of the editors of the Congregationalist, a weekly religious newspaper of this city, which divides with the Puritan Recorder the patronage of the two sections of the Trinitarian Congregationalists. In consequence of an influence alleged by Dr. Beecher to have been exerted by the editor of the Puritan Recorder against the Congregationalist, as if the latter paper could be made to suffer from the heresies of one of its editors, Dr. Beecher resigned that office. He published a card in which he assigns this reason for his resignation, and accuses the Recorder of unfair dealing with him. Though we read with care some editorial criticisms in the Recorder upon Dr. Beecher's book, sharply written and evasive of the real issue, we failed to notice the particular animus of those criticisms which Dr. Beecher charges upon them. Those criticisms seemed to us conformed in spirit to much of the special pleading of the sect from which they come, and to be addressed rather to the perverted and jaundiced judgment which Calvinism produces, than to the moral instincts with which our Creator has endowed us. The Congregationalist, and that noble paper, the New York Independent, which are both representatives of the freer and progressive spirit at work in the communion served by them, have given fair, though brief, statements of Dr. Beecher's theory, and have most courteously repudiated it. The Bibliotheca Sacra, which is a credit to the theological scholarship of our country, makes a concise but rather ineffective issue with Dr. Beecher, on two or three subsidiary points, in a critical notice, and promises an article upon the book.

Of course it must be expected that the lapse of some considerable length of time be allowed before the full effects of the startling challenge which Dr. Beecher has thrown out to his own brethren will be manifested. Such a work as his acts slowly, and in a great measure secretly, through the channels which feed the minds of men. Most of the critics who have pronounced upon the author and upon his labors. have not failed to accord to him the high tribute of conscientious, devout, and scholarly efforts in dealing with his great theme. There have not been wanting some contemptuous and trifling judgments upon

him, but for these a wise man is prepared, and to them an earnest man is indifferent.

The more we have thought upon the contents of the book called "The Conflict of Ages," and have revolved in our minds the revelations which it makes of the conflict in the mind of its author, the more serious is the importance which we attach to it. Our respectful regard for the writer and for the traits of character which he exhibits, is likewise increased by contemplating the issues which he has so boldly stated, at the evident cost of cordiality and confidence from many of his friends. The consequences of the publication and extensive circulation of the work are important in every point of view, but especially as they bear upon the popular faith in the Bible, and upon some of the prominent doctrines which controversy alleges are, or are not, to be found in it. We may assert and believe what we will concerning the external evidences by which the Bible and its divine authority are enforced upon the faith of the common multitude of its uncritical readers; but we all know that its internal evidence is the medium of its hold upon their love and confidence. The stamp and warrant of truth go with its great lessons, its tender and earnest tones, its sublime morals, its addresses to the reason and conscience, its adequate revelations of God and his attributes, the righteousness of his government, and the equity of his laws. Now Dr. Beecher assails the faith of common readers at the very point at which it is strongest, and he deals upon the Bible in the line of its internal evidence a more threatening and disastrous blow than was given by the united assaults of all the infidel writers of the eighteenth century. We make this assertion in all sincerity, and deliberately. The proof of it is easy, for it lies in a statement of the scope of Dr. Beecher's book. Here is an honored and able minister, who for a quarter of a century has made the Bible his study, has collated its various contents, and fashioned them into a system of doctrines, which he has expounded to more than one congregation, and still proclaims as saving truth to men. He maintains in a rigid sense the inspiration of the contents of the Bible, and receives its lessons as confidently as if he read them written on the skies. He tells us that this book addresses our reason and conscience, and recognizes in us certain claims to an equitable treatment on the part of God, which claims God himself bids us enforce, by which to try him and his government, as well as ourselves, our nature, and condition. The writer then proceeds to tell us that these fair claims of reason, conscience, and equity, which the Bible accords to us, are utterly set at naught and trampled upon by the system of doctrines which the Bible reveals. The book which contains such sentences as these :-"Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord,"-" Are not my ways equal?"-" A just scale and balance are the Lord's," "Why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right? - charges upon men the guilt of sin committed before they were born, dooms them to endless misery for the consequences of that inherited guilt, and assures us, by inference, that we are living under the government of a more cruel and tyrannical Deity, than the grimmest and most hideous Paganism ever conceived of in a Moloch, or a Baal, or a Juggernaut. What then is to be the effect of an ex cathedra statement like this on the internal evidence by which the Bible retains its hold upon the faith of nine out of every ten of its common readers? While science and philosophy, and speculative and antiquarian criticism, are assailing all the external and some

of the internal credentials of the Scripture, Dr. Beecher aims a blow at its very heart of life, and finds in it a hollower code than that of Chesterfield's in morals, a more dastardly policy than that of Machiavelli, and enormities of doctrine worse than any which Voltaire or Paine practised by or taught. True, Dr. Beecher proposes an hypothesis not recognized, much less advanced, in the Bible, by which its contents may be supplemented, and a sublime harmony may be established between the doctrines of the Bible and the principles of holy equity. But this hypothesis is a figment of the human brain, though it claims to be advanced to an equality with the doctrines of revelation. Even more than this as an equality with those doctrines will not express the whole and paramount importance of this hypothesis, for it is the keystone of the arch of doctrines. How can it be but that thousands of the readers of the Bible, if they be also readers of this book, will ask themselves, If the Bible needs the supplement of human fancies or theories, will it not be wiser for us to conjure out a complete religion from our own wits, than to make a mosaic creed out of Scripture and philosophy? There is a stern, outspoken positiveness of conviction in the averments made by Dr. Beecher concerning the Bible, which will find its counterpart in the judgment of multitudes of readers, either that the Bible does not contain a revelation from God, or that it does not teach the system which Dr. Beecher finds in it. His theory will be held to be as unsubstantial as the mere mist over a battle-field, where sharp arms and deadly shot are the stern realities.

Again, as to the bearings of that book on the doctrines in controversy between Unitarians and Trinitarians, we should be led far beyond our limits if we wrote half of what is in our minds. Our feelings, however, may be inferred from a statement which we will frankly utter. We consider that book as so manifestly destined to reopen in the most effective way our whole controversy, and, in the long result, to win such a triumph for our general views of the doctrines of the Bible, that we would give our vote to a proposition that one half of the whole sum of fifty thousand dollars which the Unitarians are about to raise for the circulation of their books, should be spent in the dissemination of Dr. Beecher's volume. "The Congregationalist" newspaper, after quoting some of our suggestions as to the consternation which the book would produce among the "Orthodox," writes out the word Pugh, and adds a fable about a hen or a chicken. We apprehend that this assumed levity is of the same character as the whistling which was recommended to those who were afraid of ghosts when passing a graveyard at night. The word Pugh, though not easy to spell, is easily spoken. But it contains a hard letter which is also a silent one, and we will take it as significant of painful but unexpressed feeling. "The Presbyterian" newspaper uttered that word, or the word Pshaw, we forget which, or whether it were even a less dignified one, concerning Dr. Beecher's book. But some peoples' brains are really more substantial than their words of hasty judgment would indicate. We apprehend that we shall all of us yet come to the conclusion, that Dr. Beecher's book is a very serious one, and that neither it nor its consequences are to be dismissed with a jeer.

Messrs. Little, Brown, & Co. have added to their series of publications brought out in the best style of the art, an elegant library edition, in six octavo volumes, of Hume's "History of England, from the Inva

sion of Julius Cæsar to the Revolution in 1688." There are good reasons why such books should appear in such a form. We think that the honorable and liberal publishing firm to whose members our reading community is so largely indebted, have consulted the laws of good taste and the fitnesses of things in giving us a Boston edition of Hume in this elegant shape. Some books appropriately bear the folio form; their contents entitle them to that solid and dignified presentment. A library never has a seemly look unless it contains a range of folios. Other books, in harmony with their contents, may properly wear diminutive forms, and some have no reason to complain if they are indifferently laid upon a table, or used to keep its equilibrium by being placed under it, to make up for a lameness in one of its legs. But our approved histories demand a shapely octavo form, which shall secure them from all light and mean uses. Now that the relative value of Hume's pages is well defined, his prejudices allowed for, his range of authorities and of materials understood, and his strong biases, which both restricted his search and impaired the fairness of his interpretation of primary documents, are not denied by any one, his History is left to stand wholly on its own merits, and through them, aided by its felicities of style and the tone of its philosophy, it is sure of its place in all libraries. The edition of the History now before us appears in a bright, clear type, with fair margins of strong, white paper, and the notes at the end of each volume embrace a rich collation of authorities, interspersed with those brilliant and often oracular sentences which are the charm of Hume's style. We hope a generous response will be made to the enterprise of the publishers, and that this edition will adorn many bookshelves and minister to a great many minds throughout our literary

land.

The same publishers continue their series of British Poets, by three volumes containing the poetry of Milton, and five containing that of Dryden. We have frequently referred to this beautiful and rapidly extending series of volumes, and we wish once more to commend it to those who lack these treasures of our literature. The style of the volumes has long been familiar through Pickering's edition, in the finest finish of the English press, and the edition before us is in no respect inferior.

Besides a continuation of this series of the Poets, the same firm promise the early publication of Hume's Philosophical Writings and Essays, and an entirely new and annotated edition of Plutarch's Lives.

Under the title of " The Lost Prince," Messrs. G. P. Putnam & Co., of New York, have published a volume by the Rev. J. H. Hanson, containing a full statement of the alleged facts which tend to prove the identity of Louis the Seventeenth of France and the Rev. Eleazar Williams, an Indian missionary. The materials of the volume whose authority is undisputed have an interest apart from the main issue with which they are connected, and they make the book a very readable one. As to that main issue, we must confess that a few facts which are not stated have a bearing upon it necessary to be had in view by a reader. However the truth may be, the volume will repay its perusal.

Redfield, of New York, has published, in two volumes," Sketches of the Irish Bar," by the Rt. Hon. Richard Lalor Sheil, M. P., with