an improvement upon Ollendorf. The second is a series of selections from the most classic authors of Germany, accompanied with notes rich with suggestions in comparative philology. The third is a smaller book of simple lessons. The last is a series of conversations, with English translations, giving a wealth of words, phrases, and information for a traveler in Deutschland. Teachers and professors may find the whole course unrivaled for its purposes. Literature and Fiction. The Divine Tragedy. By HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 12mo., pp. 150. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co. 1871. The Pennsylvania Pilgrim, and other Poems. By JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 12mo., pp. 129. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co. 1872. The Masque of the Gods. By BAYARD TAYLOR. 12mo., pp. 48. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co. 1872. The poets have taken to making their profession of faith. BAYARD TAYLOR summons the leading deity of each past religion successively to the scenes, (Jehovah among them,) and makes a divine "Voice from space" pronounce upon the relative truth, and promise in the future the absolute truth. The Voice authenticates beauty as divine, and, as "God of Love," pronounces EMANUEL to be his "one begotten Son, in whom I am well pleased." Though not a confession of the full truth of the New Testament, the poem is reverent, Christian, hopeful, and wrought out with no little poetic power. WHITTIER lays aside his clarion and takes up his pastoral reed to show that Quakerism down in Pennsylvania is as worthy a bard and a world-wide commemoration as Puritanism up in New England. Germantown is nobler double to Plymouth. Now we believe in the "inner light;" but the best glimpse we can get at its pure blaze tells us that what Germantown lacked and Plymouth possessed was power. This was why Wesley forsook the Moravians. His energetic soul, inspired by a bold, aggressive faith, abandoned the meek brethren to their quiet, and, we fear, too selfish watching the serene candle in the soul. Alas, their candle is dimming away into darkness! The candle ought sometimes to be a blazing torch, cutting the black midnight with its fiery sword, and lighting the way even, if it must be, through war and bloodshed, to truth and freedom. Fluent and fluid LONGFELLOW has shown how near the Gospels are to poetry. It takes but a few transpositions and extra touches of his golden pen to do the homely evangelists into sweet rhythm. He believes, apparently, in them all, and in the Apostles' Creed to boot. He can, doubtless, indorse the dying creed of the late assassinated Richardson: "There is a great comfort in believing that Jesus Christ was something more than man.” Miscellaneous. The English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century. By JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE, M.A. In two volumes. Volume I. 12mo., pp. 638. New York: Scribner, Armstrong, & Co. 1873. Mr. Froude's visit and lectures will give a special interest to this work. University Series. No. IX. The Earth a Great Magnet. A Lecture delivered before the Yale Scientific Club, February 12, 1872. By ALFRED MANHALL MAYER, Ph.D., Professor of Physics in the Stevens Institute of Technology. 12mo., paper cover, pp. 74. New Haven, Conn.: C. C. Chatfield & Co. 1872. Professor Mayer's Lecture, delivered in free, popular style, on one of the most interesting phases of science, is among the best of Mr. Chatfield's admirable "University Series." The Psalms. By CARL BERNHARD MOLL, D.D. Translated from the German, with Additions, by Rev. CHARLES BRIGGS, Rev. JOHN FORSYTH, D.D., Rev. JAMES B. HAMMOND, and Rev. J. FRED. M'CURDY. Together with a New Version of the Psalms and Philological Notes, by Rev. THOMAS J. CONANT, D.D. 12mo., pp. 816. New York: Scribner, Armstrong, & Co. 1872. Our brief examination induces us to believe that this is a very rich contribution to our literature on the Psalms. Shakspeare's Comedy of the Merchant of Venice. Edited, with Notes, by WILLIAM J. ROLFE, A.M. With Engravings. 12mo., pp. 168. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1871. Shakspeare's Tragedy of Julius Cæsar. Edited, with Notes, by WILLIAM J. ROLFE, A.M. With Engravings. 12mo., pp. 189. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1872. Shakspeare's History of King Henry the Eighth. Edited, with Notes, by WILLIAM J. ROLFE, A.M. With Engravings. 12mo., pp. 210. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1872. Shakspeare's Comedy of The Tempest. Edited, with Notes, by WILLIAM J. ROLFE, A. M. With Engravings. 12mo., pp. 148. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1871. A series of individual master-pieces of the great master, in neat form, and illustrated with valuable notes. Water and Land. By JACOB ABBOTT. With numerous Engravings. 12mo., pp. 330. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1872. Light. By JACOB ABBOTT. With numerous Engravings. 12mo., pp. 313. New 12mo., pp. 305. New Force. By JACOB ABBOTT. With numerous Engravings. York: Harper & Brothers. 1873. In this series a very ingenious attempt is made at so blending some of the profoundest problems of science with a familiar narrative as to connect them with daily thought and life, catching the illustrations from constantly occurring objects. Individually we should prefer the science by itself; but there are thousands to whom the science is a pill, and the story the sugar-coating, making the pill "swallowable." Elsie's Girlhood. By MARTHA FARQUHARSON. 12mo., pp. 422. New York: Dodd & Mead. 1872. The Lillingstones of Lillingstone. By EMMA JANE WORBOISE. Illustrated. 12mo., pp. 423. New York: Dodd & Mead. 1872. Daniel Boone, the Pioneer of Kentucky. By John S. C. ABBOTT. Illustrated. 12mo., pp. 331. Dodd & Mead. 1872. Granville Valley. By JACOB ABBOTT. 12mo., pp. 346. New York: Dodd & Mead. 1872. For Conscience' Sake. By the Author of "Alice Lee's Discipline," etc. 12mo., pp. 215. New York: Dodd & Mead. 1872. Fifteen Years of Prayer in the Fulton-street Meeting. By S. IRENEUS PRIME.. 12mo., pp. 345. New York: Scribner, Armstrong, & Co. 1872. The following works received, and notices postponed to next Quarterly: Blackie's Four Phases of Morals. Scribner, Armstrong, & Co. Under the efficient superintendence of Dr. Vincent a great activity prevails in the Sunday-School Department of our Church. The Committee of Instruction has issued a circular announcing the commencement in January of the new course of Bible Study which is based upon the "International Series," but which supplements a CHURCH COURSE comprising "Catechism Number One," "Special Lessons in Bible History, Chronology, and Geography," "Memory Lessons" from Scripture, etc. This is a grand movement. We wish it abundant success. The following is the FIRST YEAR'S COURSE: 1. TWENTY-FOUR LESSONS IN GENESIS, with Home Readings, occasional Lectures, special class-exercises, etc., by which the whole book of Genesis may be carefully examined. 2. TWENTY-FOUR LESSONS IN MATTHEW, with special studies as above. The design of the "International Committee " is thus set forth in their report: "Some portion of each year (of the seven) will be spent in studying the character and work of Christhalf the first year to his life as recorded by Matthew. During the second year similar studies will be suggested in Mark, and after that in Luke and John," etc., etc. 3. MEMORY LESSONS. "The Ten Commandments," "The Lord's Prayer," "The First, Twenty-Third, and One Hundredth Psalms," "The Beatitudes," "The Apostles' Creed," "The Baptismal Covenant." 4. SUPPLEMENTAL LESSONS in the "Bible as a Book," the "Books of the Bible," "Outlines of Bible History, Chronology, and Geography." 5. THE CHURCH CATECHISM. NUMBER ONE. 6. SPECIAL MISSIONARY EXERCISES. METHODIST QUARTERLY REVIEW. APRIL, 1873. ART. I.-THE UNITY OF THE PHYSICAL WORLD Le Ciel Géologique. Prodrome de géologie comparée. Par STANISLAS MEUNIER. Paris. 1871. Die Spectralanalyse in ihrer Anwendung auf die Stoffe der Erde und die Natur der Himmelskörper, Gemeinfässlich dargestellt. von Dr. H. SCHELLEN. Zweite Auflage. Braunschweig. 1871. By AMÉDÉE Fourth edition. 1871. 1870. The Heavens. An Illustrated Hand-book of Popular Astronomy. The Sun: Ruler, Fire, Light, and Life of the Planetary System. By RICHARD A. THE six works whose titles are above cited may serve to index a recent progress in cosmical physics which constitutes one of the most noteworthy features of the science of the nineteenth century. They report additions made to our knowledge of the constitution and history of the heavenly bodies during the last ten or fifteen years scarcely equaled by the acquisitions of any previous decade and a half. This recent progress, vast as it is, yields in interest to the promises of the new status which has been conferred upon scientific investigation. The sciences are out of their ruts. The time is past when each specialist can spend a life-time over his chosen problems without arousing the interest of laborers in other fields, or hope to FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XXV.-12 attain to prompt and valid solutions without calling them to his aid-each with such knowledge and appliances as his own labors have placed at his command. A new sympathy among the sciences is awakened. They are beginning to reach a common ground, and to reflect the unity which belongs to the universal system of truth. The sciences are becoming broadened and liberalized; their metes and bounds are less distinctly marked; like the colors of the rainbow, they mutually overlap and blend, and lose all separate identity, save in their dominant features, because, like the colors of the rainbow, they are only the outcome of a varied unity. The astronomer, seeking for a knowledge of the heavenly bodies, first lays the theory of optics under contribution to improve his power of seeing. Then he finds himself in the midst of a universe animated by mechanical forces, and executing its activities through geometrical forms and along mathematical lines. The astronomer must needs be an optician and a geometer. Next, optics places at his service a peculiar instrument, which, by a marvelous resolution of light from the sun and stars, presents a body of phenomena utterly unintelligible till chemistry steps in and introduces to his acquaintance the guests of the laboratory. Now he calls over the names of sodium, hydrogen, and barium, and they respond to him from star and nebula. The geologist, beginning with the attempt to unravel the structural arrangement of the materials of the earth, soon discovers that it has had a history-that he must endeavor to trace the successive monuments of this history back to its commencement. He calls upon the mineralogist to expound the constitution of the rocks-the solid records of the history whose reality is disclosed; and the chemist appears, to reduce all things to five or six dozen simples. Soon he discovers evidences of ancient heat, and finds himself involved in experiments upon the actual escape of heat from the earth, and abstruse mathematical calculations in reference to the necessary or possible rate of cooling from any assignable condition.* He penetrates back to a molten state, and here he catches the utterances of the astronomer, gazing through his tube at the *See especially the researches of Poisson, Fourier, Hopkins, and Thomson, (Sir William.) |