The Preaching required by the Times. At the request of many individuals, and in compliance with resolutions adopted by the Providence and the New-York Conferences of the Methodist Episcopal Church, the editor of this Magazine has carefully modified and enlarged the series of articles published in these pages last year, entitled "The Christianity Required by the Times." In connection with them he has also revised his Essays on Preaching, which graced the columns of the Methodist Quarterly in 1852. The whole are now issued in a neat duodecimo volume by Carlton & Phillips.

With regard to the merit of these essays, in a literary point of view, we may be permitted to say, in the absence of the author, that we subscribe to the unanimous verdict of all capable of appreciating pure English, neither overloaded with ornament nor lacking in vivacity. We will add too, what we should not be allowed to say if he were within hailing distance of the proof-reader, that Mr. Stevens has consecrated to one of the benevolent institutions of the Church the entire profits arising from the sale of the volume. It will, of course, have a large circulation, and take its place among our standard works. From that portion of the volume which has not appeared in these pages, we cannot deny ourselves the pleasure of quoting a passage or two on a subject just now attracting much attention, and of vital interest to both clergy and laity :

"Many of the best minds among us think the time has come in which the Church should require higher literary prerequisites, and provide means for the better education of candidates, or at least of such as have not themselves the means. The cardinal religious denominations of the country have such provisions in the form of "Education Societies." They are important features in the philanthropic finances of some of these denominations. It has been complained that, though no Church has more promising claimants of such aid than ours, and none needs it more, yet none has shown less disposition to provide it. Men now in our own ministry, it is said, have been compelled to receive assistance from the Education Societies of sister Churches. If the comparative paucity of our resources, or the urgency of other interests, have heretofore excused us from this claim, it is contended we cannot plead the excuse any longer. We now abound in resources, and it cannot be doubted that any financial project, sanctioned by our leading minds, and proposing an obvious advantage to the Church, can command any necessary liberality from it: its popularity and success will indeed generally be proportionate to the generosity and greatness of its designs. Has the time come, then, for the formation of an "Educational Society" among us, for the better preparation of our ministerial candidates; a great, a denominational society, which shall take rank by the side of our leading financial schemes? This project need not involve the question of theological schools, nor any particular standard of ministerial training. It could, like similar societies in other Churches, provide merely a given annual appropriation for the support of candidates in our academies or colleges, subject to few and general restrictions. Personally we are not prepared to say how far such an institution would be applicable to the present circumstances of the denomination; so strong, however, is the demand for educated, or at least intellectual men, for the pulpits of our Atlantic churches, that it is believed our people would take no ordinary interest in it, provided it were projected on a scale of commanding proportions."

The author's sentiments as to the importance of higher literary qualifications in the ministry,

whether acquired in a theological school or elsewhere, are frankly avowed:

"There is, we fear, still lingering among us, and only half latent, a fallacious apprehension that intellectual improvement, pushed to any considerable advancement in our ministry, would be hurtful to its old purity and energy. We forget that Methodism, like the Reformation, like modern missions, and like almost every other great movement of the evangelical world, bad its birth in an institution of learning. • It sounded its first trumpet,' says some one, and commenced its march over the world from within the gates of a university. Most of its great leaders were learned men. Wesley, its founder and legislator, was the Fellow of a college; Charles Wesley, its psalmist, was a collegian in the same university; Coke, its first American bishop, and the founder of its missions, bore the highest title of the learned world; Benson was a university student; Fletcher was the president of a theological school; Clarke was a student of universal knowledge. Among our own great names are those of Ruter, Emory, Fisk, Olin, and others of the dead and living. Were these men unfitted for the demands of Methodism by their intellectual culture? Were they less devoted, less useful, less faithful to the peculiar duties of our system than their uneducated fellowlaborers? And would a ministry generally composed of just such men be unsuitable for even the hardest demands of our work? No, no; mental capacity does not imply moral incapacity. Methodism is compatible with large minds, as well as large hearts, and can employ them on the sublimest scale of their powers. We soberly believe that such minds, imbued with the evangelic spirit, can find nowhere else a more congenial sphere of self-devotion and self-development. Men of less capacity have been signally useful among us, but it has been appropriately asked, 'What would be the standing of Methodism at this moment, if the mass of our ministry had added to their natural powers the acquired talents of such men!' Its banners would in all probability be waving over most of the world."

From the "Southern Methodist Publishing House, Nashville, Tennessee," we have a wellprinted duodecimo, entitled Progress: consider ed with Particular Reference to the Methodist Epis copal Church, South. The author, the Rev. William J. Sasnett, is, if we may judge from his book, quite a young man; inexperienced at any rate in the art of composition. He has many good thoughts, and offers several suggestions that are worthy of consideration, especially by the ministers of the Church for whose benefit they are made public. He is, however, so full of iteration, his ideas are so dim, and so vaguely expressed, and his sentences are so involved that the reading of his volume is hard work.

It is divided into sections denominated, successively, the Educational Function, the Literature Function, the Eleemosynary Function, the Missionary Function, and the Spiritual Funetion. With regard to Education, he contends, that it should be wholly in the hands of the clergy. Laymen are no longer to be entrusted with this "Function," and local preachers he ignores utterly:

"The ministry are the leading representatives of the Church in her organic capacity, everywhere, and especially in Methodism; and their immediate management of any agency as appointed to it by the Church, through her constituted authorities, is necessary to secure the most perfect and intimate connection of the Church with it. The fulfillment of this condition st once determines it to be a constituent part of Church the Church-and allying it everywhere through the operations-it at once gives to it the imprimatur of connectional bond of the ministry with her function

aries, makes it, in the most intimate sense, an integral part of her system."

This seems very much like "progress" backward. We rejoice rather when pious laymen, men who have not solemnly vowed to devote themselves wholly to the work of the ministry, are found in academies, schools, and colleges, guiding the studies of the young. Revolving round the same idea, Mr. Sasnett continues:"Methodism may enact her regulations, expressive of her sense of the value of education and of her confidence in particular institutions. She may even contribute her means and patronage, and while all this may powerfully promote the interests of education as such, yet as long as she withholds her ministry, whose business it is understood to be to manage all her organic operations, from the immediate conduct of her educational operations, she, in that very policy, discredits and repudiates education as one of her own legitimate functions. She lowers and degrades it from the position of an integral element of the system of the Church, and denies herself consequently of the highest capabilities to make her educational operations tributary to her own advancement."

Mr. Sasnett has a very high opinion of the superior sanctity and wisdom of the ministry, and so mean a one of the laity, that he repudiates with great horror and at great length all idea of any participancy of the latter in the management of Church affairs. He says:

"The very fact that ecclesiastical government has its origin directly in God, and is made for the people and not by them-the very fact that it is theocratic in its character-furnishes an argument, that it is not to be popularized by a general participancy of the masses in it; but rather that it is to be exclusively in the hands of the ministry, that its theocratic character may be maintained. When the masses participate in the government of the Church, their very conscious power to fashion and control it, reduces it to their own level, and divests it of its sanctity and awe; but when in the hands of the ministry, the very sacredness of the trust thus reposed in them tends to inspire them with an awful sense of its character and their own high responsibility, while the removal of it above the laity and the commitment of it to those whose office and position they regard with peculiar reverence, contributes greatly to the respect they entertain for it, and to the cultivation of a right sense of the dignity and authority of God's law."

In discussing "the Missionary Function," Mr. Sasnett gives some very good advice to slaveholders. He assures them that slaves "have immortal souls," and asserts what many of them did not know before, and certainly we did not, namely, that "the very reason of the distinctive organization of the Methodist Church, South, grew out of her unwillingness to relinquish her privilege to serve the slaves of the South."

Lest, however, he might be thought to be tainted with unpopular and Christian sentiments upon the subject, he takes occasion to declare that "slavery, both abstractly and concretely, is defensible on the ground of both philosophy and Scripture;" and, looking away beyond the pitiful handful of fanatical abolitionists, he seems to suppose the whole world is arrayed against that favorite institution of the southern states. He says, and with this extract we must conclude:

"The world may vent their fanatic spleen, and spend their time in vain and hollow rantings in behalf of the southern negro, while the thousands of the destitute in their own midst are perishing in squalor and moral wretchedness; but let us, conscious of the superiority of the condition of this people above that of all others of like grade in any society-conscious of the abstract right and moral propriety of the institution itself

more earnestly than ever address ourselves to the work of their salvation, and prove ourselves their best friends, by our direct efforts to elevate their moral condition and promote their real welfare."

Corsica: Picturesque, Historical, and Social, Account of the Bonaparte, Paoli, and other princiwith a Sketch of the Early Life of Napoleon and an pal Families, translated from the German of Ferdinand Gregorovius by Edward Joy Morris. Philadelphia, Parry & M'Millan. Mr. Morris, to whom we are indebted for this translation, was formerly United States Charge d'Affairs at Naples. The work had, indeed, already been done into English, by Alexander Muir, and was published in Constable's Miscellany of Foreign Literature. From a hasty comparison of the two, we incline to give the preference to the version of our own countryman. They are both perhaps equally faithful, but that of Mr. Morris appears the more spirited.

As to the work itself, it is the only accessible source of reliable information relative to a part of the world full of interesting associations. Its practical history and social customs, its heroic struggle for independence, the patriotism and devotedness displayed by the Corsicans in the bloody contest with Genoa, its geology, botany, and statistics, are all treated with sufficient minuteness; and the account of the author's tour through the island in the year 1852, abounds with graphical descriptions and illustrative anecdotes. Some new facts in the early life of the Napoleon are given, and a glowing tribute is paid to the memory of Paoli, of whom we have an admirable likeness :

"His memory," says our author, "is held in the highest reverence by his countrymen. The Corsicans are proud of Napoleon because he was their compatriot; but, at the mention of Paoli's name, their eyes kindle like those of a son when allusion is made to the virtues of a deceased father. It is impossible for a man to be more honored and beloved after death than Pasquale Paoli; if posthumous fame be a second life, then this, the greatest man of Corsica and Italy, yet lives in the freshest bloom of existence in the hearts of the old men who saw him face to face, and in those of the Corsican children who are stimulated by his example to lofty deeds and patriotic inspirations. There is no higher title than that of Father of his Country; it has often been misapplied and perverted by sycophantic adulation, but in Corsica I recognized its full force and truth. Paoli presents a fine contrast to Napoleon, love of man against self love-no curses of the dead to blight his name. At Napoleon's nod millions were slaughtered to satisfy his lust of fame and conquest. The blood which Paoli shed was poured out for liberty. The glory of no battle-field encircles his memory; but the foundation of a public school appears to me more honorable and meritorious than the bloodstained laurels of Marengo and the Pyramids."

We have not space for further extracts, and lay down the volume with reluctance. It deserves a place in every respectable library.

The Messrs. Wood of this city have published, in a neat octavo, Dr. Bedford's Lectures on the Diseases of Women and Children. The lectures are not of a scientific character merely, but designed equally for the profession and the private citizen. They embody the results of the doctor's long and varied experience, are full of practical advice, and written in a most attractive style. Take, as a specimen, the following as introducing his subject, and the spirit with which he enters upon his work:

"Woman, from her infancy to old age, is an object of constant interest; and it is not strange that a being so tender, and yet so full of endearments, should have

of an unparalleled popularity, was the prevailing and absorbing sentiment of his soul-his responsibility to his God.

Of course the life of such a man cannot be otherwise than deeply interesting.

son had something to write about-ample materials; and it is to his credit that he has not followed the track of most of the biographers of the present age who aim, apparently, to make as big a book as possible, and palm upon their unhappy readers page after page of matters irrelevant and unimportant. In this respect our author deserves well of the public. He has condensed a narrative extending over a period of half a century into the moderate compass of little more than four hundred duodecimo pages, and our enterprising publishers, Messrs. Carlton & Phillips, have lost no time in giving us the volume in a style of befitting elegance.

Emma; or the three Misfortunes of a Belle.Harper & Brothers.-Jacob Abbott, well known as a writer of story-books for children, has advanced to a higher, if not more useful walk of literature, and with considerable success. Emma is really a nice little novel. She has her three misfortunes; but in the end is married to a "gentleman of considerable fortune, and a very agreeable man in his person and manners." All the other prominent young ladies are also happily married in the course of the story, and good advice is given to misses who may be matrimonially inclined. Bashful young gentlemen, too, may learn how to go through the dread ordeal of what is called "popping the question," without fear of a rebuff. Mr. Vernon, a very shrewd Yankee lawyer, writes a letter to his inamorata, which very adroitly puts the responsibility upon her. Instead of offering himself directly, he says in effect"My dear, if you will have me I will make you an offer." Here is his letter. It is certainly a model in its way :

"MY DEAR MISS CAROLINE, -The inclosed note which I have written for you is of a highly confidential character. If you are engaged to be married, or if for any other reason you prefer not to receive a confidential communication from me, please return it to me unopened, either with or without a reply to this from yourself. Whether you receive the note, or decline to receive it, I shall be sure you act from some good and substantial reason, and my friendship for you will continue as strong as it has ever been. "Very truly yours, EDWARD VERNON."

A wag

This is an age of biographies. Memoirs of the dead and of the living swarm around us and keep up an incessant buzzing. suggests the propriety of editorial announcements as to who is not engaged on an autobiography; or whose memoirs are not in the course of preparation; and there is a precedent for this negative kind of information. We read under the telegraphic head of a daily paper"The Atlantic has not arrived," as we did from week to week some time ago; but the joke is somewhat stale now, "Sebastopol not yet taken." But to the subject of memoirs. We have had Barnum, done by himself, and Greeley magnified by a friend. We have now James Gordon Bennett and his Times, by a Journalist, from the press of Stringer & Townsend. Until enlightened by this closely-printed duodecimo, of nearly five hundred pages, we had not the most re

"Conscious of virtue, integrity, and the purest principles, I can easily smile at the assassins and defy their daggers. My life has been one invariable series of efforts, useful to the world and honorable to myselfefforts to create an honorable reputation during life, and to leave something after my death for which posterity may honor my memory.'

All this, and a great deal more, the biographer proves, apparently to his own satisfaction. True, his hero has been charged with almost every conceivable vice-falsehood, slander, smuttiness, levying black-mail; has been fined by the courts, and horsewhipped in the streets; but he smiles as he wraps himself in his self-complacent mantle, and the writer of his memoir grins with him as he declares that "All men have rejoiced when he (Bennett) has taken sides with them. No man, society, sect, enterprise or institution exists, that is not made proud when met by his (Bennett's) favor, or that does not feel reproved and rebuked by his criticism." If not applicable to the efforts of the biographer, then, certainly, to the treatment his victim has thus far received from an

ungrateful public, we suggest as a motto for the next edition, Falstaff's ejaculation-" How this world is given to lying!"

Higgins & Perkinpine, of Philadelphia, have sent us A Voice from the Pious Dead of the Medical Profession. It consists of brief, and, for the most part, well-written memoirs, of eight eminent physicians and surgeons, who exemplified the beauty of the Christian religion in their lives, and in their departing hours illustrated its sustaining power. The work is from the pen of a physician, Dr. Henry J. Brown, who favors us also with a preliminary dissertation on "The Cross as the Key to all Knowledge." We commend the volume to the general reader, while, in the language of the preface, "To medical men of every class these memoirs come with singular force, involving, as they do, the modes of thought, the associations, and the difficulties common to the medical profession. Their testimony is as the united voice of brethren of the same toils, proclaiming a heavenly rest to the weary pilgrim. It comes, too, unembarrassed with any considerations of interest, or mere purpose of sect or calling."

The Missing Bride; or, Miriam the Avenger, (Peterson, Philadelphia,) is a tale by Mrs. Southworth, said to be founded on fact. We have not read it, having been able to get no further than the description of the heroine, which, believing it to be a fair sample of the work, we copy:

"Edith's nature and the style of her beauty was very refined. Her form was of medium size and perfect symmetry. Her beautiful head set upon her falling shoulders. Her complexion was of the purest semitransparent fairness, seen in the white sea-shell. Her forehead was shaded by fine, silky, black ringlets, so light as to be lifted by every breeze, and threw wavering soft shadows upon her pearly cheeks. Her eyes were long-shaped, dark, vailed, and droopingher countenance the most dreamy and spiritual you ever saw. Her beautiful bust was daintily carved and her graceful limbs delicately rounded and tapering."

THE REV. DR. WHEDON, of the New-York East Conference, one of our regular contributors, is engaged, as we are happy to learn, in the preparation of a Commentary on the New Testament, designed to be practical in its character, and adapted to family reading and the use of Bible classes. We anticipate a work of great merit.

The Rev. Andrew Manship, a Methodist minister of the Philadelphia Conference, has, in course of preparation for the press, a volume, entitled "Thirteen Years' Experience in the Itinerancy."

"Moredun, a Tale of the Twelve Hundred and Ten," said to have been written by Sir Walter Scott, has been republished in this country. It

is not even a successful imitation of Scott's style: at least 30 say the critics who have examined it; and one of them, a writer in the Athenæum, declares that it could not possibly have been written until some years after Scott died. Here is the proof. Chapter iv of vol. i begins: "In one of the narrow streets which wound up tortuously from the Sandhill to the Castle of Newcastle-upon-Tyne-some traces of which still resist the improving hands of time, money, and Granger—a man, &c." This passage offers us a date. The story must have been written after Mr. Granger had commenced rebuilding Newcastle, and probably was written after he had finished his task. Now, Scott died in 1832. Mr. Granger made the purchase which ultimately led to the vast alterations in Newcastle in August, 1884. It is therefore absolutely impossible that "Moredun" could have been written until some years after the death of Scott.

Junius, Letters of.-The following paragraph appeared in the Bengal Hurkaru, published in Calcutta on February 19th last:

"The Englishman [a military newspaper published in Calcutta) states that there is a gentleman in Calcutta, who possesses an original document, the publication of which would forever set at rest the rexata quæstio as to the authorship of the Letters of Junius,' The document, which we have seen, is what our cotemporary describes it to be, and bears three signatures: that of Chatham' on the right-hand side of the paper; and on the left, those of Dr. Milmot, and J. Dunning, afterward Lord Ashburton. The paper, the ink, and the writing, all induce us to believe that the document is genuine; and we understand that the gentleman, in whose possession it is, has other documentary evidence corroborative of this, which still further tends to clear up the riddle which so many have attempted to read with small success.”

Autograph Letters.-At a recent public sale in London, a short original letter, written by John Wesley, brought £3 38.; a letter of Joseph Addison, £2 88.; a letter of Robert Burns, £4 158.; one in the hand-writing of John Calvin, £9 98.; and two of Oliver Goldsmith, £15 12s. We know not how it may be in England, but the forgery of pretended autographs has been carried to an almost incredible extent in Germany; and letters from Weimar state that the literary committee engaged in investigating the forgery and sale of autographs attributed to Goethe

and Schiller have received from various parts of Germany twelve thousand manuscripts, the owners of which distrust their genuineness. A young man, one of the attendants of the Grand Ducal Library, and formerly a shoemaker, has been arrested, and confesses that for two years he has devoted himself most assiduously to meet the public demand for autographs of the poets at a reasonable rate. Arrests of venders are going on in the Grand Duchy of Weimar, in Hanover, and in Prussia.

M. Cortambert, First Secretary of the Société de Géographie, has published a map of the celebrities of France, showing the distribution of talent over the country by indicating the birthplaces of the great men. It appears, from this map, that the district of La Manche has produced the greatest number of poets, historians, philosophers, and artists;-that the part of the country near the North Sea is the cradle of most of the great warriors;-that orators, naturalists, physicians, and inventors, were mostly born in the regions of the Mediterranean;-and that the number of politicians and lawyers is fairly balanced between the Mediterranean and La Manche.

The Town Library of Trieste is said to possess seven hundred and seventy-two different editions of Petrarch's Poems, and one hundred and twenty-three of the works of Pope Pius the Second, (Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini, Bishop of Trieste.) The Library contains at present twenty-four thousand volumes, mostly works on commerce, navigation, geography, &c. Last year twenty-two very rare editions were added to the collection of the works of Petrarch and Æneas Sylvius.

A Biblical and Theological Dictionary, on an enlarged plan, is in course of compilation, by Professor Strong, of Flushing, Long Island, assisted by Dr. M'Clintock.

The Dramas of Shakspeare.-To the already almost innumerable editions of the great poet, another is in course of preparation by Mr. Halliwell, of London. It is to be published in folio, and to be more perfect, and accompanied by more notes and illustrations than any of its predecessors. The editor has issued a circular, soliciting the communication of early editions of the plays of the poet. He offers to pay for them liberally, and will give a hundred pounds sterling for a perfect copy of the first edition of Titus Andronicus, and a proportionate sum for other rarities.

The famous controversialist, Dr. David Strauss, of Ludwigsburg, (author of 'The Life of Jesus',) has retired, we are told, from theological polemics, and has devoted himself to literary pursuits of a more peaceable nature. He is making

minute and valuable researches as to the lives of the older poets and artists of his Suabian fatherland; and after having published some years since a very interesting biography of Schubart, the patriotic prisoner of the Hohen