sible, it will prove a boon. We could have wished that the religious lessons had been made to arise more artlessly from the story, which would have given them a less ex-officio air, and have added much to their effectiveness and point.

Dr. Finlay's History of Greece under Foreign Domination, of which this is the concluding volume, has already attained the rank of a classical work, and requires no commendation from us. Like its predecessors Greece under the Romans, The History of the Byzantine Empire, and Medieval Greece and Trebizond, the present section of this opus magnum everywhere bears the marks of rare learning, unwearied industry, and independent research. Critical but not prosy and dull, candid and impartial, but not stoical, it breathes throughout the true historical spirit. The period embraced extends from the fall of Constantinople, in 1453, to the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence in 1821, when, after a hideous trance of two thousand years of helotism, the genius of freedom again began to stir the dry bones of Greece. We heartily congratulate the author and the public on the successful termination of his laborious and useful task, and, with a plaudite omnes, invite our readers to enjoy the book for themselves.

The Militiaman at Home and Abroad. By EMERITUS. Smith, Elder, and Co.-This title will remind the reader of certain funny sketches which appeared some years ago in our frolicsome contemporary Punch, and the illustrations by Leech which adorn the book will render the reminiscence more vivid. Yet far is it from the author's thoughts to pour ridicule upon the English Landwehr. Anything but that. Himself an officer in the Royal Blanks, he chronicles with enthusiasm all its movements, from its equivocal generation, in a tadpole state, out of the muddy clods of Zummerzetzhire, to its disembodiment, which we suppose must mean its death. He watched by its cradle and followed its hearse, and here fondly traces the history, almost day by day, of the dear deceased. In the pinch of the sad Crimean disasters, and the drain of regular troops thus occasioned, the Royal Blanks patriotically offered themselves for service in the Mediterranean, and were accordingly despatched to Corfu. This gave our author an opportunity of seeing Malta, Gibraltar, and the Ionian Islands, all which he paints with admirable skill and effect. Indeed his capital powers of description, aided by a first-rate flow of animal spirits, which makes him see everything couleur de rose, render him a very pleasant companion. He hits off natural scenery and men and things with equal felicity, and his pages sparkle with genuine humour, though sometimes a little overstrained. To general readers his book will ensure an agreeable hour, and to those who at the present crisis are likely to be engaged in the raising of new regi ments of militia, it will afford much needful information and many valuable hints.

Lectures and Miscellanies. By H. W. FREELAND, M.A. Longmans. The Lectures are only two in number, the subject of the first being Literary Impostures, and that of the other, The Life and

Writings of Lamartine. They were originally prepared for a Mechanics' Institute at Chichester, by whose members, we imagine, they must have been highly relished. We, at least, have read them with much pleasure. From the former lecture we should have liked, but for our narrowed space, to extract our author's account of the extraordinary literary forgeries of the Abbé Vella in 1782. Vella was a Maltese priest, who pretended that he had discovered in Arabic a copy of the Diplomatic Code or correspondence between the Arabian Governors of Sicily and their masters, the Sovereigns of Africa, and for a time he completely hoodwinked the Court of Naples, which lavished immense sums upon the publication of his worthless and manufactured MSS. The story is but little known in this country, and Mr. Freeland is therefore entitled to great thanks for the pains he has taken to throw light upon it. The remainder of his volume consists of short reviews, with which, in deference to the craft, we shall not presume to meddle. The sayings of reviewers are, of course, like the sayings of popes.

Life in China. By W. C. MILNE, M.A. Routledge.-As a missionary amongst the Chinese for nearly a dozen years, during which he visited Macao, Hong-kong, Canton, Chusan, Ningpo, Shanghai, and travelled through the heart of the three provinces, Chihkiang, Kiangse, and Canton, Mr. Milne had excellent opportunities for making himself acquainted with the native character and customs. His book proves that he knows how to report what he has seen in an intelligible and pleasant manner. We have read it with much interest, and on the strength of his competent testimony hereby abjure several errors which, in common with most other Western barbarians, we had previously clung to, in reference to this singular people. It seems that we are all wrong in thinking that it is a common thing with the Celestials to feast on such diabolical fare as rats, mice, and puppies. Rat-pie is quite as popular with the chiffonniers of Paris, and amongst the gipsies and jack-tars of our own country, as it is with any portion of the lower classes in China. In fact, the resort to such small deer is more frequently the dictate of sharp hunger than of choice, and the case is as exceptional there as in Europe. Mr. Milne, however, was himself present at a repast at which small crabs were served up alive in vinegar, and eaten in that state by the guests. He himself tried it

the biter bit;' and

on, but with him it turned out a decided case of like a celebrated statesman, he was glad to get out of the mess with a surrender of the 'appropriation' claws. This love of live crabs is not worse than our own penchant for oysters. It is a calumny, too, that the Chinese are addicted to a diet of worms. We are still more pleased to find that the charge of wholesale infanticide, commonly brought against them, is equally unfounded. Indeed, so far is it from the truth, that they actually maintain extensive foundling-hospitals, and have done so for centuries. Mr. Milne's account of these and similar charitable institutions amongst them will serve to dispel many unworthy prejudices against a nation, with which even the flames of war are destined ultimately to weld us in an ever-closer

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intercourse. Mr Milne follows up his critical sifting of common Western notions about the Chinese - which takes up the first division of his work with an account of native life at Ningpo. His Third Part gives us a glance at life in the interior; and the Fourth is devoted to Shanghai. His detailed account of the exceedingly interesting colony of Chinese Jews at Kaifung, about six hundred miles from the latter city, will especially repay perusal. Indeed, the volume throughout is replete with entertainment and instruction, and is one of the most readable which has been given of late to the world. Four maps, corrected from the author's own observations, considerably enhance its value.

Memoirs by the Right Hon. Sir Robert Peel, Bart., M.P., &c. Parts II. and III. Murray.-We simply chronicle the appearance of this second volume of Sir Robert Peel's instructive memoirs. Earl Stanhope and Mr. Cardwell, the trustees of his papers, have now discharged that portion of their sacred duty in which they had no discretion. They intimate, however, their purpose of giving to the public, on their own responsibility, a selection from the correspondence of this eminent deceased statesman. The new volumes will be eagerly looked for, although they must not be expected to equal in intense political interest those already published; the reading of which is like walking upon the thin crust of hardly extinct volcanoes. Part II. relates to the history of Sir Robert Peel's short-lived government of 1834-5; and Part III. to the Repeal of the Corn Laws.

Tom Brown's School Days. By an OLD BOY. Macmillan and Co. Cambridge.-A capital book, brimful of the blithesomeness, fun, and frolic of boyhood, tempered with excellent sense and wisdom. The school is Rugby, in the days of the departed Arnold; but since battrap-and-ball, cricket, and leap-frog are not a monopoly of that abode of the Muses any more than lessons and thrashings, young boys and old boys, of all sorts and schools, will revel in the pages of this delightful and wholesome production. It is a spirited record of genuine schoolboy life-a novel and excellent idea. If we wish to refresh our lingering reminiscences of the happy days of toffey and tasks, peashooters and prosody, the utile et dulce of the age of corduroy, this is the reading for us. School friendships and feuds, school mutinies and loyalties, school cowardices and heroisms, all the wondrous revelations of the magic mirror of the future, here find their Homer, who discourses of these high themes with true poetical inspi ration. The author's style is a model for purity, raciness, and strength. He draws from the 'well of English undefiled;' and the consequence is, that his prose is more sprightly than nine-tenths of what goes by the name of poetry. We are glad that the book has reached a second edition before we could find time to notice it.

'Shall' and' Will.' By Sir E. W. HEAD, Bart. Murray.-When are we to have a really scientific grammar of our mother-tongue worthy of the language in which Skakespeare sung, Locke reasoned, and Burke perorated? Something that we can show to a German, for instance, with pride, as analogous to what Grimm and Becker have

done for him? Such a work is as much a desideratum as a thoroughly reliable History of England. Murray, Crombie, Donovan, and Latham are all valuable enough in their way, but general and pretty loud complaints prove too plainly that none of them will serve the turn. The first is clearly antiquated, and his successors have been too fond of the old trick of merely stringing idioms together without anything deserving the name of philosophical arrangement and analysis. The Philological Society, much to its credit, proposes to help us to an improved Dictionary. Is it too much to ask of it a better Grammar as well? Meanwhile, these two chapters on the use of the future auxiliary verbs, by Sir Edmund Head, are an invaluable contribution to the great work. The first very fully investigates the national usage of the two verbs, according to the American, Irish, and Scottish, as well as the pure English idiom, and traces its history down from the times of Henry IV. and Henry V.-nay, even from Wycliffe and Chaucer. The second chapter pours on the problem the strong light of Comparative Philology, showing how the futures are expressed in the German, Celtic, Classical and Romance languages. Annexed are a number of valuable appendices on interesting incidental points of grammar.

Border Lands of Spain and France. Chapman and Hall.-Jottings by a sensible and well-informed man of a visit to the mountains of South-western Europe. Our traveller knew both what to observe and how to observe; and since he passed over much untrodden ground, we have to thank him for adding to our knowledge of those interesting highland regions. His route embraced the Basses Pyrenees, the Basques, the Bearnais, the proscribed race of Cagots (on the dark problem of whose origin he sheds some welcome light), Eastern and Western Catalonia, and the people of Cerdagne and Roussillon, amongst whom the spirit and manners of mediæval Europe, including the mysteries and moralities of the Trouvères, survive to the present day. But the gem of the book is our author's elaborate account of the little republic of Andorre, of which we confess we had never before heard. There it is, however, with its charter of a thousand years back, written by the hand of Charlemagne himself! The venerable autograph is kept with religious care in a chest with six keys; and our traveller was permitted to inspect it in the presence of the six Consuls and the Syndic, or President of the Liliputian state. The absence of any one of these six functionaries, who are the representatives of as many parishes, of which the state, with its population of some eight thousand souls consists, would have rendered this impossible. One-third of the volume is occupied with the description of this Pyrenean Switzerland, including an appendix, in which the author learnedly vindicates its claims to be considered sovereign and independent.

Letters from the Slave States. By JAMES STIRLING. Parker and Son. Mr. Stirling landed at New York in the August of last year, and, during the autumn months, traversed New England, the Empire State, and the Canadas; whence, returning to his starting-point, he set

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out afresh for Philadelphia, crossed the Alleghanies to Pittsburgh and Cleveland, and reached Chicago, the key of the Far West, about the middle of October. On this portion of his travels over ground which has been so often described his book is wisely silent. From Chicago, the western New York, the population of which has swollen within ten years from 5000 to 100,000 or 120,000 inhabitants, his course was towards the North-western and Southern States; and it is to this section of his tour that the Letters, as expressed in the title, relate. The writer statès that they were originally prepared solely for the eye of a friend-the old story, with more truth, we daresay, in this instance than in some others, and no more than the average share of affectation. If the fare be good of which the public is invited to partake, it needs no such apology as is implied in such a statement; and if it be unpalatable, such an announcement does not mend the matter. For ourselves, having tasted Mr. Stirling's cakes and ale, we pronounce them excellent; and, simply protesting that no excuse was requisite, heartily thank him for our entertainment. There is not, perhaps, so much of, the flow of soul' as of the feast of reason.' Sentiment gives place to hard philosophy and still stonier political economy, which is evidently our author's favourite study. All this accords with his Scottish nationality, which, even in presence of so outrageous a wrong as slavery, is cool and calculating. There is not a spark of fanaticism in the book. This is in some respects a great advantage, as likely to give more weight to his testimony against the abomination. We doubt not that educated planters in Virginia and Tennessee will read what he has written with more calmness than they can be expected to accord to Dr. Cheever and Mrs. Stowe. But, whilst we say this, we would not be understood as insinuating that there is any want of humane feeling in Mr. Stirling's way of looking at slavery. Far from it. Now and then in his pages we find the man getting the better of the economist, and we have then bursts of true eloquence, the effect of which is greatly heightened by our knowledge that these ebullitions of hot wrath proceed from one of the coolest of men. Such passages remind one of the boiling springs amongst the snows of Iceland. Here is one of these Geysers:

'Now what shall I say of slavery? I have as yet said nothing; but you will not do me the injustice to think me indifferent to that matter. On the contrary, that, of all others, is the subject nearest my thoughts; and I may say, ever since 1 entered into the Slave States, it has pressed like a nightmare on my breast. Oh! it is an accursed thing; and the nearer one comes to it, the more hideous it is. It seems to me almost as if I were travelling in an enchanted land, with giants, and gnomes, and bad genii, and slaves. There is something in slavery so utterly incongruous with all a civilized man's ideas, and habits, and sympathies, that I never can get rid of a certain feeling of unreality about the whole thing. Even when the bare, disgusting fact is pressed unmistakeably on my notice, my mind relieves itself from the dilemma by unconsciously conceiving it as a mere passing shadow that for a moment darkens the earth. And this, moreover, is the result no less of my soberest reflections. The system cannot last; assuredly it is doomed. It must and will disappear, and that speedily. If there be a God in heaven, it must away. I am not fanatical, I hope. I recognise the practical difficulties with which the question of American slavery is environed. I have no cut-and-dry remedy to pro