ART. XVIII.-Leaves from Eusebius. By the Rev. H. STREET, M.A. THESE "Leaves" are from Eusebius's great work, "The Evangelical Preparation." In the early struggles of the church against paganism and the infidelity of the philosophers, the Bishop of Cæsarea was the boldest and best equipped champion of his time. He was more than a match even for Porphyry; laying bare the sophist's untenable principles, detecting his skilful arts, and exhibiting the absurdity and essential hideousness of that cosmogony and polytheism which had been reared on Phoenician and Egyptian foundations. The bishop demonstrated how superior was the system of the Hebrews to that of the most accomplished sages of refined Greece; and all this with an elegance of style, as well as a force of argument, which the mere English or modern reader will not expect. It is therefore with pleasure that every lover of the truth and admirer of scholarship should welcome these "Leaves," which appear to be extremely well selected, and which are certainly translated in a happy manner. Nor will the metrical version of the oracles, those curious relics, disappoint the poetic any more than the scholarly taste. These "Leaves" are published very opportunely, considering some of the questions which at present agitate the Church; for they lend an insight into its condition and doctrines at an early period of its history and trials.

ART. XIX.-The Sporting Almanac and Oracle of Rural Life. 1843. THIS Sporting Almanac is now five years old, and is as spirited and refreshing as ever. To sportsmen, the information given in it is not more practical in its nature than pleasant in its form; everything of the kind being made applicable to the months as they pass. Even to persons who are not skilled in country sports, and have but few opportunities of enjoying rural life, such an oracle will be consulted with a profitable relish. Besides, it presents all the more ordinary and generally useful features of the Almanack race. The illustrations are excellent; they would grace and enhance the value of a book of much higher pictorial pretension, as might be expected when it is known that the plates have been well engraved after sketches of E. Landseer, Cooper, Davis, &c. The Sporting Almanack for 1843 is really a very beautiful, sensible, and desirable little book. There are in every part and province of it unmistakable proofs of right judgment, ample knowledge, and healthy taste.

ART. XX.-Genoveva; a Poem. By RICHARD CH. FRENCH.

THE story of Genoveva has been often told: that of a lady falsely accused of infidelity and condemned to die by her lord. The ministers of his jealousy, however, penetrated with pity, allow her with her child to escape a houseless wanderer, and to have no protector but God. A white doe suckles her babe, the mother living upon roots, till her innocence made manifest, she is by the remorseful husband eagerly taken home; but to die of the terrible

wrongs which had been heaped upon her, and the dire hardships she had suffered.

The story, of course, belongs to, or is cast in, a remote age, and will be variously told, according as the romancer or the poet who adopts it as his theme, may find suited to his genius. In the hands of Mr. French it has much touching elegance of sentiment and neat sweetness of versification,— frequently swelling into pathos, and reaching the chords of nature with an easy power. The passage which we cite is a good specimen, having for its immediate subject in the tradition the husband's dreary remorse :

"But the Count, whom prosperous hours
Back to his ancestral towers

Bring, and to his widowed bowers,
How shall he, this lone man bear.
The approach and entrance there?
Lonely man! though at his side
Troops of friends and vassals ride;
Lonely man! though at his gate
Him ten thousand welcomes wait;
Heart unwelcomed home, although
Thousand voices skyward go;
Thousand voices fill the air,
But the one is lacking there.
How shall he endure to pace
Those long echoing halls, and trace
Each remembered happy place,
Haunted each with its own ghost
Of some ancient splendour lost,
Each with its own vision bright
Of some forfeited delight
Rising clear upon his sight?
How beside a cold hearth stand,
Quenched by his own reckless hand?
He has borne it, man forlorn!

Borne-while all things may be borne ;

And he lives, nor freedom asks,

From life's ordinary tasks.

Him though oft the crowded hall

And the thronging festival
With that dreariest sense oppress
Of a peopled wilderness;
Though the crowds, that to and fro
On their busy errands go,
Oft times seem with all their tasks
But so many gibbering masks;
Though he oft must contemplate
The strange mockeries of fate,
Which with hand profuse had shed
Gifts so many on his head,

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Which had lent him splendour, fame,
And a glory round his name,
Honour, due to him whose hand
Helped to save his native land
Yet withdrew the single thing
Which to all a worth would bring.
And the years give no relief
Mellowing an austerer grief:
But a melancholy dim,

Darker and darker fell on him.

Round him, when his state they knew,
Friends and faithful kinsmen drew,
With consoling words and speech,
Which his heart's wound cannot reach.

ART. XXI.-The Works of Robert Burns, with Notes and Illustrations. Parts I to III.

AFTER all that has been done by publishers, biographers, critics, and artists, -by admirers of every sort, for Burns, there yet, it appears, is to be a testimony borne to his genius surpassing these former efforts and results,—a more adequate monument to his fame than any that has hitherto been reared. The announced publication, three parts of which have reached us, promises to confer honour not only upon Messrs. Blackie and Son, but to be worthy of Scotland, whether taken as a seat for publishing enterprise or for the appreciation of the bard by the nation.

This edition will undoubtedly have special claims on the attention and patronage of the public, on every one who speaks or studies the language and dialects of Great Britain. The suggestion of Mr. Lockhart, in his memoir of the poet, has been adopted and pursued by the projectors and proprietors of the work, where he says that "to accumulate all that has been said of Burns, even by men like himself of the first order, would fill a volume-and a noble volume that monument would be-the noblest, except what he has left in his own immortal verses, which, were some dross removed, and the rest arranged in chronological order, would, I believe, form to the intelligent a more perfect and vivid history of his life than will ever be composed out of all the materials in the world beside."

The features of this edition are to be the following:-A chronological arrangement of the poems, as far as possible, with annotations from all the best commentators; and, in addition, a great variety of Original Notes appended, together with the whole of Mr. Robert Chambers's biographical and topographical details of the persons and places connected with the pieces ;the Poet's Life by Dr. Currie, with such additions and lights as have occurred since that memoir was written, and in the same affectionate spirit ;- Professor Wilson's eloquent "Essay on the Genius and Character of Burns ;”—and pictorial illustrations, comprising all the landscapes and portraits that embellished the work entitled, "The Land of Burns." The landscapes embrace all the localities identified with the history and works of the poet, from the

pencil of Mr. D. O. Hill, an artist who is said to be intimately acquainted with the subjects he has depicted, and alive to all the poetical feelings which they inspire. We ourselves can speak to his fidelity in several of the illustrations before us.

The edition will extend to twenty-one parts at 2s. a part; each containing four plates and forty pages of letter-press. When completed and bound, it will present two large octavo volumes, or one of a very massive appearance. It will be the most beautiful and valuable collection of the Ayrshire bard's works, with what illustratively relates to him or them, that has ever met the public eye; and will be truly a national work.

"The Book of Scottish Song," (which waits for notice,) and "The Works of Robert Burns," come both appropriately from one house.

ART. XXII.-Gerald: a Dramatic Poem. By J. W. MARSION. Mr. MARSTON's name has obtained a wider notice since we received this Poem than, perhaps, he ever dreamed of, although the bardic tribe, like his own Gerald, have high aspirings and generally a sufficient appreciation of the powers of their own genius; for his "Patrician's Daughter" has been welcomed on the stage in a manner calculated, we should think, to meet his fondest hopes, and to stimulate him to still better efforts and more successful results.

Gerald has not been written for the theatre, but is a poem in a dramatic form, and as such it will contribute to Mr. Marston's fame. It is indeed a fine and impressive creation of genius. We use the term in its legitimate and strict sense; for there are not merely many passages in it that abound with warm and healthy feeling, and others that exhibit an imagination of power and compass, but an originality without which the term genius can never properly be attached to any name. The best test that we can bring to bear at any time, so as to pronounce judgment upon the character of a work of imagination, especially if cast in a dramatic shape, is to inquire of ourselves, after a perusal, whether that perusal was a task; whether we met with things to be lamented in the course of the reading; and above all, when the end was reached, what has been the effect produced upon our sympathies,what the emotion and the sentiment? Now, we dare not say that we had not our regrets while going through this poem, that we did not meet with things that we considered unseemly; but this we are free to declare, that with the exception of some conceits of language, and also, perhaps, some affectations of thought, we rose from the perusal with great satisfaction,with delight and a feeling of being bettered; in short we read the poem at one sitting, without a pause, with eagerness, and without knowing at what rate the time had sped, or that it had sped at all.

Gerald is a poem of genuine beauty, that is, beauty that will abide reexaminations,—and manly instructiveness. It teaches as well as touches; its teachings belonging to the stern realities of this life, and even to the proper preparation for that which is to come. The hero of the piece has not only genius, fondly indulging its highest aspirations, but he is overWeeningly confident of its power, and obtrusively proud of its aims. To

cure him of his airy notions and to prove to him that the loftiest nature may have ample scope and sufficient occasions among the realities of the world, in the exercise of the homely, and in looking forward to what is the grand destiny of the feeble as well as the gifted in mind, requireth that he encounter life as it is, and be qualified by its severe truths. Accordingly, after giving us the youth of genius on the eve of leaving home, all self-sufficient, oracular of triumph, and scorning the less imaginative of his fellow men, we find him in the capital with a work that is to lead the world captive in thought and admiration. In the third part, that world rebukes and bitterly teaches him until he despairs. In the fourth, he returns brcken in spirit and to be a pathetic sorrower; and in the last, to be gradually weaned of all vain imaginings, of all morbid sensitiveness, and to hail death as the passing from a state in which man's boundless aspirations can never realize their legitimate aim, to one of inexhaustible excellence, of unspeakable glory and love.

Edith is the betrothed of Gerald, and engages the chief interest after him. She is as sensible and considerate as she is lovely and sweet; being necessary not only as a winning contrast to her lover, but a rebuker, and the occasion of the most touching lessons at the hour of his final departure. We now present two or three short specimens, and readily adopt those which have been selected by some of our right-judging contemporaries. The first gives us Edith insisting upon more measured expressions of love than Gerald has been uttering, when he is introduced to us.

Gerald. A novel grief-

To mourn excess in love!

Edith. Love me as one

Of Nature's common children-weak enough
To need support, unwary, wanting counsel,-
A weeping, smiling, trusting, doubting girl,
With good intents, marred in the acting oft,

With heaven-ward thoughts that fail through weariness,
And droop the wing, while yet the glance aspires ;-
Having much cause for gratitude,—but more

For penitence, sincere ; yet how infirm !
Oh, let me, love! be oftener in thy prayers,
And in thy praises less.

This is from the same scene :

Edith. Ah, love! I would not have these moods recur
In which thou spurnest so the humbler minds.

Perchance there is less difference in men,

Than the great deem. The coarse, unlettered hind,
May not discern the truth in thy high words,
Nor in thy fine and airy thoughts perceive

The feelings they unfold. Yet trust me, love !
Feelings are like in most men, though the forms
Which they put on be diverse. Sympathies
Most deep, and holy, often stir in hearts