'History of Heresies' does not contain his own name as that of a heretic, for he thought himself sound"! Of Faustus he says, "Pope Gelasius put him and Cassian down in the first Index of Prohibited Books." Page 697 says that Asbury "preached in private circles for a year, while Garrettson was flogged," etc. Our Bishops "itinerate, and are elected by the General Conference." We thought their election came before the itinerating. The following characterization of Dr. Olin is, we think, extravagant. "His successor, Dr. Stephen Olin, so attached to the Greek Testament, at home or in his tent by the Jordan, gave to Methodism a vigor which is manifest in ethical, scientific, theological, historical, biblical, and cyclopedic literature, thus holding fair rivalry with denominations which are credited with an earlier inheritance of scholarship." This is far from true of any one man among us, but nearer truth of Dr. Fisk than of Dr. Olin. Yet the sentence is good proof of the intentional fairness and liberality of the writer. The History of England from the Accession of James the Second. By LORD MACAULAY. 8vo., pp. 609. Vol. I. Set of five volumes. New York: Harper & Bros. 1879. By JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY, D.C.L., 8vo., pp. 579. Vol. I. Set of three vol The Rise of the Dutch Republic. A History. LL.D., Corresponding Member, etc. umes. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1879. These two stately sets upon our table from the Harper press are, of course, a necessary requisite for the completion of every historic library. Full tributes to each of these historians have lately been paid in our pages in articles from able pens. The histories are both written in the same modern spirit, detailing narratives of events impregnate with the modern spirit of enlightenment and advance. The Dutch history presents the development of a Republic in striking analogy with our own, but really advancing to a stage equivalent to our Confederacy before the formation of our national Constitution. This was owing to the death of that great hero, whose living character so remarkably resembled our Washington, and whose martyrdom by the hand of an assassin suggests our Lincoln. But while the Dutch history presents an analogy to our own, the English is truly and literally our own. For we are English, and not Dutch, and English history is the earlier part of our own history; and while in Motley we are among crude but genuine Republicans, yet they are comparatively strangers, with foreign faces and odd, pedantic Dutch-Latin names; whereas, in Macaulay, we are among old acquaintances, historically pioneering our own historic course, with our own faces in more beefy condition, talking our own language, and bearing our own or cognate names. We take our place on that wide area which an Englishman has called "the greater Britain," on whose wide and widening territory the language of Chatham and Daniel Webster is spoken. What a grandeur it is that a Macaulay and a Motley are able to address with proud acceptance so world-wide an audience! Life of Rev. Thomas Brainerd, D.D., for Thirty Years Pastor of Old Pine-street Church, Philadelphia. By M. BRAINERD. 12mo., pp. 455. New York: A. D. F. Randolph. Price, $2. In It was about the year 1825 that Thomas Brainerd presented himself to be a scholar at Mr. Grosvenor's Academy at Rome, New York. With some rural traits in his appearance and style, he soon exhibited a manliness of port, a vigor of intellect, and a freedom of utterance easily rising into a flow of oratory, that commanded all respect. He was going to be a lawyer, a politician, a statesman, with an unlimited ambition. But in the good providence of God his path was intersected by Charles G. Finney. a revival of most marvelous sweep, under the early ministrations of that wonderful evangelist, Brainerd was arrested, and a most unexpected turn was given to his life. It was not a change of ambition. It was an agonized surrender of his ambition to his sense of duty. He studied theology at Andover, and his clear ability soon brought him into association with such men as Lyman Beecher, Albert Barnes, and Charles G. Finney. The earlier part of his ministry was spent in Cincinnati, but during the many years of his maturer life he was one of the ecclesiastical "powers that be" of Philadelphia. His memoir, from the hand of his surviving widow, Mrs. Mary Brainerd, evinces how well he had chosen his partner in life. Eminent as was his career, it was not more eminent than was expected by his academic comrade. Protestantism in Michigan: Being a Special History of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and Incidentally of Other Denominations. By ELIJAH H. PILCHER, D.D. Illustrated. 8vo., pp. 464. Detroit: R. D. S. Tyler & Co. Upon a history of Methodism and Protestantism generally in Michigan, Dr. Pilcher has been engaged, as time allowed, for twenty years, and has been enabled to bring his work to great fullness and apparent accuracy. It will be very acceptable to thousands, of the Peninsular State especially; and will form a very interesting and valuable part of the permanent religious history of both our Church and country. The narrative of the early start of Methodism in old French Catholic Detroit is very interesting. A hard soil it was; very hard, indeed, as is attested by the utter failure, in the first attempts, by such men as Nathan Bangs and William Case. The numerous personal sketches give piquancy and point to the narrative. At every advance we are cheered with advancing victory. The engravings recall to our memory the face of many a departed, or still living, friend. Eminent in the history, justly and truly, as early pioneer and faithful, loyal, and stalwart pillar, is the author, Dr. Pilcher himself. The Conflict of Christianity with Heathenism. By Dr. Gerard Uhlhorn, Abbot of Loccum, and Member of the Supreme Consistory in Hanover. Edited and Translated with the author's sanction from the Third German Edition by EGBERT C. SMITH and C. J. H. ROPES. 12mo., pp. 508. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1879. A more precise title for this volume would be: A History of the Overthrow of Paganism in the Roman Empire by Christianity. It begins with the reign of Augustus, and extends to the total defeat of the last effort of paganism with the death of Julian. It consequently unfolds the greatest revolution in the history of mankind. And ecclesiastical history, if such purely it can be called, has seldom been clothed in so living a style. We have not the statistical dryness of Mosheim, nor the perpetual sarcasm of Gibbon, nor the dreamy diffuseness of Neander; but great events, characters, and principles portrayed with a fresh and vigorous power. It is written with a thoroughness of scholarship to satisfy the scholar, yet with a zest of spirit and a freedom of style that suit it for the popular reader. 1879. Vol. The History of England, from the Invasion of Julius Cæsar to the Revolution in 1688. By DAVID HUME, Esq. A New Edition, with the Author's Last Corrections and Improvements, to which is prefixed a Short Account of His Life, Written by Himself. In six volumes. (In a box.) 8vo. Vol. I, pp. 644. Vol. II, pp. 652. Vol. III, pp. 613. Vol. IV, pp. 587. Vol. V, pp. 569. VI, with Index, pp. 527. New York: Harper & Brothers. Hume's history is old, but not quite obsolete. Criticism has invalidated many of its statements, and present public thought. largely rejects his general views of England's history, in which he strangely contrived to unite the bigotry of a high Tory with the looseness of a freethinker. Charles Fox said that "Hume so loved a king and Gibbon so hated a priest, that neither could be trusted where a king or a priest was concerned." That Hume is, in spite of all drawbacks, demanded for re-publication, is proof of the great intellect of the man. History of the Rise of the Huguenots of France. By HENRY M. BAIRD. 8vo. Vol. I, pp. 577. Vol. II, with Index, pp. 681. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1879. Our readers are familiar with productions in our pages from Professor Baird's classic pen. The present work is, doubtless, a labor of love, portraying the tragic history of his spiritual and personal ancestry, the French Huguenots. The present volume traces their rise, and closes with an epic fitness with the memorable massacre of St. Bartholomew. The author has had access to a large amount of sources shedding new light on the history. A fuller review may be expected in our Quarterly. History of the United Netherlands from the Death of William the Silent to the The Life and Death of John of Barneveld, Advocate of Holland. With a View of the Primary Causes and Movements of the Thirty Years' War. By JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY, D.C.L., LL.D. In two volumes. With Illustrations. (In a box.) 8vo. Vol. I, pp. 389. Vol. II, with Index, pp. 475. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1879. These new and handsome editions of Motley, neatly boxed up and freshly issued, will be very acceptable to the reading public. Both have been amply reviewed in our Quarterly, and they only need announcement. Educational. A New Latin Dictionary. Founded on the Translation of Freund's Latin-German Lexicon, edited by E. A. ANDREWS, LL.D. Revised, enlarged, and in great part re-written, by CHARLTON T. LEWIS, Ph.D., and CHARLES SHORT, LL.D. 4to, pp. 2019. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1879. The best German and American scholarship is embodied in this work. And the American contributions, by both the late Professor Andrews and Professors Lewis and Short, have brought it with an admirable completeness to the latest dates. For, strange as it may seem to some, "progress" is as rapid and real (though not as flaring) in Latin lexicography as in other departments of thought. The following paragraph will suggest to our readers. something of the nature of this progress: Great advances have been made in the sciences on which lexicography depends. Minute research in manuscript authorities has largely restored the texts of the classical writers, and even their orthography. Philology has traced the growth and history of thousands of words, and revealed meanings and shades of meaning which were long unknown. Syntax has been subjected to a profounder analysis. The history of ancient nations, the private life of their citizens, the thoughts and beFOURTH SERIES, VOL. XXXII.—13 liefs of their writers, have been closely scrutinized in the light of accumulating information. Thus the student of to-day may justly demand of his lexicon far more than the scholarship of thirty years ago could furnish. The present work is the result of a series of earnest efforts by the publishers to meet this demand. We expect a full review of the work from the hand of an amply competent scholar. Literature and Fiction. Literary Studies. By the late WALTER BAGEHOT. With a Prefatory Memoir. Edited by RICHARD HOLT HUTTON. Two volumes. London: Longmans & Green. 1879. To most American readers Mr. Walter Bagehot, who died some two years since, was known only as a writer on politics and finance. His books on these subjects, "Lombard Street," "Physics and Politics," and "The English Constitution," were reprinted in this country, and the last named is used, we believe, as a text-book in several of our colleges. But these two volumes show that as a literary critic Mr. Bagehot had abilities of the very first order. A part of these essays were first collected into a volume some twenty years ago; and we are inclined to agree with Mr. Hutton, the editor of this edition, that "the literary taste of England never made a greater blunder than when it passed by that remarkable volume of essays with comparatively little notice." The essays are a series of studies upon the lives and work of some of the greatest English writers, including Shakspeare, Milton, Gibbon, Butler, Cowper, Shelley, Scott, Thackeray, and a half dozen others. What is first noticeable in them is their freshness of manner and wholly unconventional tone. Both in matter and in style they are delightfully original. It is a common observation that studious men, even though writers by profession, write dull books. They have knowledge and opinions, but they lack the art to communicate them. As has been wittily said, their hard reading is the cause of their writing what is hard to read. If one is to get the ear of the world, one must have the speech of the world; and this is not to be learned in the closet. In particular, the literary criticism of a professed critic is often tiresome reading; it is over subtle, and sometimes seems to be written in a kind of technical dialect. But Mr. Bagehot was a banker. And he wrote like a banker-which is as much as to say that, in most respects, he wrote exceeding well. The shrewd sense, the varied experience of men and things, the racy vigor and curtness of speech, the ready and pungent wit, the homely and striking illustration, these all mark the man of the street rather than of the study. |