ing-the faculty of believing without a reason, and the faculty of hating without a provocation......In the mind of Mr. Southey reason has no place." Macaulay then throws a sweeping glance at his chief works, praising the life of Nelson and of Wesley. But "The History of the Peninsular War is already dead," and "The Book of the Church contains some stories very prettily told. The rest is mere rubbish." But the critic admits that he had always heard that Southey was an amiable and humane man; and now that critic and author are gone, and their form of the old contention has passed away, it is more possible for us than it was for Macaulay to see how amiable and humane a man Southey was.

two thousand closely printed quarto pages, | safed in measure so copious to any human bethat it occupies fifteen hundred inches cubic measure, and that it weighs sixty pounds avoirdupois. Such a book might, before the deluge, have been considered as light reading by Hilpa and Shalum. But unhappily the life of man is now threescore years and ten, and we can not but think it.somewhat unfair in Dr. Nares to demand from us so large a portion of so short an existence." Macaulay proceeds in this stinging strain. to describe the labor of reading the book, while he acknowledges the indefatigable industry of Dr. Nares in accumulating material. The object of the series of "Men of Letters" is to make the best use of the research of such investigators and accumulators, and to serve up their two thousand pages in two hundred without serious loss to the general reader. The success of the series is the proof of the sagacity of the enterprise.

To show us this is the pious and pleasant duty which Mr. Dowden has discharged in the volume of the series upon Southey. He was a professional man of letters. In a sense he was a publisher's "hack," supporting not only his own family, but at times the family of his brother-in-law Coleridge, and that of the other brother-in-law Lovel, by patient persistence in literary labor: no day without a line; no year without a book: his sequestered life gliding gently away in the midst of fond domestic affections, a recluse in his library dealing only at a distance with men and affairs. He was the Tory laureate of George the Third, and the ruthless Whig Macaulay says that his official odes were worse than Pye's, and as bad as Cibber's. But Whig or Tory, Macaulay or Milton, Chaucer or Shakespeare, any man of great or little fame in any degree might well be glad if the story of his life were as pure and blame

No volumes in the collection have more fully justified its title than the first and one of the later issues, the Johnson and the Southey. They are both to be defined as especially English | men of letters. Southey was ten years old when Johnson died, and when he was twentynine he settled at Keswick, and began that career of unflagging literary labor which continued for forty years. In the history of literature there is no more devoted and pathetic figure-pathetic because the dreams of his youth so soon vanished, and because, after that long and faithful literary service, only his name survives, but practically none of his works. Very few of the readers of these words, probably, have any knowledge of Southey. They may remember that the "Holly-Tree" and the "Battle of Blenheim," which they read in class-less as that of Southey. It was absolutely debooks at school, were his poems; and they may know his Life of Nelson-a model biography. But the only distinguished man of letters whom we have ever known who read Southey as other people read Wordsworth and Tennyson was Hawthorne. In the little upper study of the Old Manse which he has graphically described, in which Emerson wrote the first modest volume that announced the appearance of an original and exquisite genius, and from whose window Emerson's clerical ancestor saw the immortal fight at Concord bridge, and caught the flash of" the shot heard round the world,” there were a few books upon some hanging shelves, one of which was a bulky volume of Southey's poems in an American edition. Hawthorne said that he read him with pleasure. There are few readers who would say so to-day.

void of incident, and yet, as Mr. Dowden tells it, following, of course, the copious biography by Cuthbert Southey, it is full of interest, and a charming picture-perhaps the most charming in literature-of the professional man of letters.

It would not be so if it were a tale of mere literary drudgery. But fortunately Southey's profession coincided with his taste. Books were his chief pleasures. He loved a library more than any other place, and he was a tireless reader as well as writer. It seems to be a queer freak of fate that a student of tastes so exclusively literary, and drawn, as in his poems, to remote branches of literature, should have become such a doughty political warrior. He was the toughest of Tories and the stanchest of Churchmen, and the polemic was unsparing. He would not have hesitated to free his Macaulay, again, fifty years ago, had pro- mind about Macaulay as plainly as Macaulay nounced the severest judgment upon Southey; freed his about Southey. But he was very pabut the Edinburgh could be hardly expected tient and sweet with the young Shelley, and to speak kindly of one of the strongest sup- he had endless patience with the multitude of ports of the Quarterly, just before the Tory hapless and hopeful and disappointed writers, catastrophe in the passage of the Reform Bill who are always attracted to a conspicuous auof '32. "Mr. Southey," says Macaulay, in his thor. Charlotte Brontë appealed to him long most ex cathedra tone, "brings to the task two before her fame, and he gave her most friendly faculties which were never, we believe, vouch-counsel. All his bitterness was in the ink of

controversy, and he never spilled a drop at home nor in his friendly correspondenee.

Southey had, indeed, a certain distinction which it is not easy to explain. Landor admired him; but his poems did not sell, and they seem never to have had a general acceptance which would justify his standing among the poets of his time. When he died he was so considerable a man that his biography and letters filled six volumes. They are interesting for themselves, but not from any literary significance of his own; and this smaller volume is valuable, not for its account of an author who has added to the treasures of English literature, but for its picture of a tender, tranquil, and laborious student who made his living by writing books that are forgotten. It is an

honorable task, nevertheless, for the book that dies may be as useful for its specific purpose as the immortal work is valuable for its permanent influence. Certainly it is a task as honorable as that of the other man who makes far more money by buying and selling merchandise or speculating in stocks. It is much harder to do what Sonthey did, and to do it so honestly and well. But a man of letters in any degree will read this simple and touching biography with singular interest, and all others will see from

"this portraiture of him Whom Grasmere' shall remember long,"

how noble and lofty and admirable a life that of the professional man of letters may be.

M history of the Countries from the

R. MOTLEY'S writings form a continuous | partisans of the doctrine of provincial sover

on the one hand, and partisans of

one strong undivided entity, with the Princes of Orange as its head, on the other; and also to penetrate beneath the surface of the motives and interests that influenced domestic policies and colored foreign affairs. Mr. Geddes's relation of these complex details is clear, compre

iveness. For, aside from the fact that Americans may find a striking historic parallel to recent incidents in their own country in the widely divergent interpretations of the nature of the union, and the heated arguments and threatening dissensions to which these interpretations gave rise, the period was not entirely barren of great events, nor destitute of genuine heroes, since it was the period in which the Dutch navy ruled the seas, and carried dismay even to England, under the leadership of grand old Tromp and his historic broom, aided by his stanch lieutenants De Ruyter and De Wint. Of De Witt's personal life so little is known, outside of his public acts and the pol

abdication of Charles the Fifth, the accession of Philip, and the active appearance of William the Silent upon the scene, until the confederation of the seven provinces into a republic, and the tragic exit of Barneveld-a period of sixty-eight years, stretching from 1555 to 1623. But hitherto, for English read-hensive, and far from being devoid of attracters, the history has been interrupted by a wide gap, extending from the death of Barneveld to the death of De Witt, and the entrance upon the stage of William the Silent's illustrious descendant and namesake, with whose career as Prince of Orange and King of England we have been made familiar by Macaulay's glowing pages. This gap has now been satisfactorily bridged by Mr. James Geddes, in a painstaking and judicious work, which he entitles the History of the Administration of John De Witt, Grand Pensionary of Holland. Mr. Geddes's history has not the rich attractiveness of Motley's brilliant histories, for the very sufficient reasons that the period which it comprehends is not a heroic period, its most prominent actor, Deicies with which he was identified, that Mr. Witt, is in no sense a hero, and in studying it Geddes judiciously discriminates when he calls we are moving in altogether a lower plane of his work a history of an administration, rather human interest, passion, duty, and activity, than a biography of an individual. Its printhan when we ponder the grand epoch which cipal historical and political teaching is the Mr. Motley describes with such graphic power. evils that flowed from a divided sovereignty-For these reasons, Mr. Geddes has aimed less to from the existence of seven distinct and jarproduce great or picturesque effects than to ring provincial organisms, each jealous in its give the reader an opportunity to see the inte- advocacy of home rule, and all of them imrior workings of the newly founded republic; peding the federal authority by unwieldy to study the nature of the union by which the methods of considering and determining state' provinces were held together, and the charac- questions, and of deciding upon and enforcing ter and composition of their social and politic-executive acts. The story of the corrupt or al institutions; to witness the rise of parties, interested bargains, and of the jealous rivaland the collisions of men and policies caused | ries that resulted from the combination of these by the different constructions that were put steady old Netherlanders into a congeries of upon the nature and intention of this union by factions, reads like a page in the history of our History of the Administration of John De Witt, Grand own times, and prepares the reader for the adPensionary of Holland. By JAMES GEDDES. Vol. I. 1623- Vent of the third William of Orange, and his 1654. 8vo, pp. 399. New York: Harper and Brothers. tacit investiture, in obedience to the national

instinct of self-preservation, with powers that were only less than regal, and that enabled him to wield the energies of the republic as if the discordant provinces were a unit. The first volume of this valuable work brings the history down to the conclusion of De Witt's negotiation for peace with England, and the passage at his instigation (under the pressure of Cromwell's dictation) of the Act of Exclusion, by which the house of Orange-then represented by William the Third, a child four | years old-was excluded from the Stadtholdership of either of the provinces, and from the Captain-Generalship of the United Netherlands. Up to this time the Netherlands were governed by a number of municipal oligarchies, unrestrained by the house of Orange, and untempered by the democracy. De Witt and his policy represented a republic whose constant and increasing tendency was to resolve itself into a series of cantonal atoms. On the other hand, the house of Orange, and the party that was being slowly welded together around it, represented the idea of national unity and strength. These were the forces that were to struggle for the mastery, until the one last named got the upper hand when William reached manhood. Before this, however, sixteen changeful years, replete with bickering and conflict and war, are yet to intervene, the events of which Mr. Geddes reserves for the concluding volume of his able work.

other term than barbarism. These sketches also depict the native irresolution of the Slav mind, the despotic instincts of Russian reformers, and the crass ignorance and imbecility of the bureaucracy that has successively ruled and devoured the nation, and monopolized all official stations. These preliminary chapters are followed by exceedingly interesting expanded sketches of the most eminent Russian poets, historians, novelists, politicians, and agitators, in which the author enlarges upon the careers of those who have been representative champions of nationalism, radicalism, socialism, and Slavophilism, and passes in review the most notable among those who have made an impression upon modern Russian affairs, and contributed to the unrest that now causes the empire to heave as if vexed by hidden volcanic fires. An elaborate account is given in another chapter of the Russian universities, comprising the period from 1859 till the present day, and embracing, in addition to details as to their course of study and methods of government, a view of the relations of the government to them, and of its tyrannical and repressive policy toward their professors and students, with the result of converting them into malcontents or active conspirators. This view of university life is appropriately supplemented by a description of the system of female education in Russia, as conducted in the state institutes and in private boardingschools, with an epitome of their defects and injurious tendencies. No portion of the work, however, is more deserving of close attention than the two prolonged essays forming its clos

THE author of Russia Before and After the War combines the requisites that enable a writer, if not to solve, at least to state with clearness, the puzzling problem of Russian pol-ing chapters. One of these is an exposition itics, and to describe with apparent fidelity of the prevailing popular sentiment on the the personnel and the methods of Russian pub- Eastern question-a sentiment partaking of lic administration, and the conditions and in- the elements of political and religious fanatifluence of Russian social, political, and ecclesi- cism, which predisposes the masses to regard a astical life. Himself a Russian-and thus sat- war for the recovery of Constantinople from isfying the well-known requirement of Prince the Turks as a holy war, and stimulates their Dolgorouki that a "book on Russia must be zeal as the Crusades stimulated the zeal of the by a Russian, since Russia resembles no other Western nations of Europe. In the other, uncountry"-an alumnus of the University of St. der the head of "The War and the Dynasty," Petersburg, and a thoughtful observer, thor- the author describes the influence of the varioughly familiar with the peculiar phenomena ous foreign wars in which Europe has been of Russian politics and society, his outline of engaged, and emphatically the influence of the Russia admits foreigners to a more intimate recent wars, in educating Russian opinion as knowledge than has hitherto been attainable to the relations of those who govern and those of the interior history of the nation during the who are governed. In his judgment, the conpresent century, more especially since the Cri- sequences of these wars have recoiled most inmean war and the late war with Turkey. His juriously upon the present dynasty, and have earlier chapters are concise but bold sketches roused a popular sentiment for liberty into a of the characteristics of the generations pre- state of abnormal vigor and activity. The ceding the present one, from Paul to Nicholas, author evidently sympathizes with this sentiin which the idea is reiterated that the pres-ment, and his volume is a powerful appeal to ent generation, its rulers and radical reformers alike, has been surrounded from its cradle by an atmosphere which can be described by no

Russia Before and After the War. By the Author of Society in St. Petersburg, etc. Translated from the German (with Later Additions by the Author) by EDWARD FAIRFAX TAYLOR. "Franklin Square Library." 4to, pp. 62. New York: Harper and Brothers.

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the public opinion of the world, through which, in the absence of a free press to give voice to public opinion in Russia, he hopes to impress upon the mind of the Czar and his advisers that the time has come when, if he would reconcile the western provinces of his empire to his dynasty, and would prevent or delay its disintegration, he must decide upon the mea

sure of concession that he is willing to make | Bunyan as he moved and acted in his outward to the national demand for political emanci- | daily life, and as he existed in his interior inpation. What the author believes the nation now demands is the recognition of the right of society to have a voice in the destinies of the state. Whatever could have been done under the rule of unlimited absolutism, he believes has been done. What is now demanded is that the nation shall control the men who conduct its affairs; the governed must enjoy a share in the government; society must have a controlling share in the administration; some apparatus must be devised to check the tendency and habit of the government to indulge in incessantly changing experiments in legislation; there must be a guarantee of more uniformity, more method, and more legality in administration and expenditure. If these concessions are not granted, the author-who is neither a Nihilist nor a Socialist, but an enemy to unlimited personal government-predicts a revolution the like of which has never yet been witnessed in any civilized nation.

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tellectual and spiritual being. Each of these states is made to interpret the other, and the entire lineaments of the whole man are in this way reproduced with equal distinctness and lifelikeness. Mr. Froude has not added much to what was already known of the purely personal incidents of Bunyan's life, through Bunyan's own account of himself, the lives by Southey and Philip, and Macaulay's wellknown paper in the Edinburgh Review. The little that is added is chiefly corrective of errors fallen into by Macaulay in his account of some of the circumstances attending Bunyan's arrest, trial, and imprisonment. To literary readers the most interesting portions of Mr. | Froude's fine monograph will be his skillfully epitomized summaries-each of which has the grace and interest of a continuous narrative—— of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, The Holy War, and The Life and Death of Mr. Badman. The theological disquisitions which are freely interspersed throughout the volume are thoughtful, suggestive, and generally candid. At times, however, they are colored by cynical and supercilious skepticism.

ALTHOUGH Mr. Froude takes no pains to conceal his opinion that much of John Bunyan's religious creed was based on premises which he and other advanced modern thinkers complacently class among antiquated or exploded M. HENRI DE LACRETELLE indulges more errors, he does not parade his dissent so obtru- freely in the intoxication of panegyric than is sively as to be offensive to those who still ad- agreeable to the constitutional reserve of Enghere to Bunyan's theological views, and regard lish and American readers; but still, after disthem in their main lines as embodying the counting all his extravagances, they will yield most essential and momentous truths. Nor themselves to the fascination with which he does his skepticism, as to the truth of the ar- invests the familiar, social, and domestic life ticles of faith that Bunyan accepted implicitly, of Lamartine. His descriptions of Lamardiminish his admiration of the purifying and tine in society, in his home surrounded by his ennobling influence which the belief in them friends, in his study, in his hours of rural enexercised in Bunyan's day upon the thought joyment and exercise in the country, during and practice of individuals and society in every❘ the throes of revolution, amid his preparations grade and ramification of life. Indeed, no- for the republic, and after his fall, are exceedwhere, even in the writings of their most or- ingly engaging revelations of the characteristhodox defenders, is there to be found a heart- tic traits and surroundings of the poet-statesier or more appreciative exhibition of the man. We may not always accept the author's vitalizing operation of those doctrines upon valuation of Lamartine's genius, whether as a the heart of the individual and the general poet or statesman, but we can not withhold frame of society, than in Mr. Froude's brilliant our admiration of the cleverness and geniality outline of the life of Bunyan,' just published of his airily discursive memoir. Besides introin the "English Men of Letters Series." Inducing us very closely to Lamartine himself, executing this sketch Mr. Froude has availed himself of the facts that Bunyan's great allegorical work, The Pilgrim's Progress, is the life of its author cast in imaginative form, and that every step in Christian's journey had been first trodden by Bunyan himself. In a lesser but notable degree this is true, as Mr. Froude shows, of all Bunyan's works. All of them record real occurrences in the life of their author, or in the lives of those with whom he associated; and they reflect real feelings, impressions, motives, and actions in the most lively and natural manner. The result of Mr. Froude's study is therefore a dual portrait, in which we see

3 Bunyan. By JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE "English Men of Letters Series." 12mo, pp. 178. New York: Harper and Brothers.

the memoir affords us numerous brief glimpses of the men and women who revolved around him when he was at the height of his literary and political renown, and who have also left a permanent impression upon French literature and politics. Among others whose personal, social, political, and intellectual characteristics are thus sketched by M. De Lacretelle are Thiers, Châteaubriand, Lamennais, Ponsard, Madame De Girardin, Montalembert, Caussidière, Ledru Rollin, Louis Blanc, Arago, SainteBeuve, Dumas (father and son), and Victor Hugo. The book is one for hours of relaxation and enjoyment.

• Lamartine and his Friends. By HENRI DE LAGRE TELLE Translated by MARIA E. ODELL 16mo, pp. 329. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

independent of the Chinese government, but that its people belong to a different race, speak a distinct idiom, and are very unlike the Chinese in their garb, customs, religion, and institutions of all kinds. His account of the people of Corea has the merit of novelty and fullness, and his attractive inventory of its resources and capabilities will doubtless incite enterprise and commerce to knock loudly for admission at its closed doors. Such, indeed, is Mr. Oppert's avowed object in inviting attention to the extent of its territory, the healthfulness of its climate, the rich productiveness of its soil, and the variety and importance of its productions. Perhaps nothing will be more effective toward forcing its doors open to the commerce of the world than Mr. Oppert's glowing accounts of the vast mineral treasures that lie hidden in the plains and mountains of this unknown land. Corea, he declares, is opulent

MR. J. BRANDER MATTHEWS modestly styles | memoranda of its water approaches. Mr. Ophis clever and tasteful little book on The Thea-pert corrects the prevailing idea that Corea is tres of Paris a guide to those of his country- a part of China, and shows not only that it is men who spend numerous days and nights in Paris-and also to those who stay at home, whose adventures, as Goldsmith makes his inimitable Vicar say, are by the fireside, and all their migrations from the blue bed to the brown. It is, in truth, a most agreeable guide, introducing us to all the various Parisian theatres and other places of amusement, and thoroughly indoctrinating the reader as to their customs, usages, observances, and interior arrangements. But it is much more than a mere guide. It is also a careful historical and critical abstract, in which he reviews the progress and present state of the modern drama in Paris, its fluctuations and advances, including under this head music, the ballet, and dramatic representation, and sketches the careers of many of its greatest recent and contemporaneous celebrities. The book is enlivened with numerous characteristic anecdotes of eminent actors, actresses, dramatists, musical composers, sing-in marble, granite, sulphur, arsenic, quicksilver, ers, and dancers; and contains a large fund of tin, iron, coal, silver, and gold. In his opinion interesting information bearing upon dramatic no other country on the Asiatic continent apliterature and art, and the relation of the the- proaches it in mineral wealth. Mr. Oppert's atres to the state, to authors, and to perform-style is careless, slipshod, and meagre almost ers. Independent chapters are given to elab-to poverty, but his matter is full of novelty orate descriptions of the New Opera, the Comé- and interest. die Française, and the Théâtre Français, and the sketches of the actors and actresses of the two last named are embellished with portraits of the most distinguished of them, in character.

NOTWITHSTANDING that our recent literature has copiously supplied us with works on China and Japan, so that we have become quite familiar with the former, and know more of the latter than we do of some European countries, there has been comparative silence concerning the great Corean peninsula, although it is separated from China by an imaginary line only, and from Japan by the easily navigated Straits of Corea. Consequently there is the densest ignorance as to its extent, population, government, productions, and history—a state of affairs which has been contributed to and perpetuated by the rigid exclusive policy which has been maintained by its government, and which has practically secluded fifteen millions of people from all the rest of the human family, and made their country a literal terra incognita. Mr. Ernest Oppert, having made three voyages to this unknown land, and penetrated a considerable distance into its interior, now supplies us with an exceedingly interesting and valuable account of its geography, language, history, productions, resources, and commercial capabilities, together with useful charts and

The Theatres of Paris. By J. BRANDER Matthews. With Illustrations. 16mo, pp. 208. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

A Forbidden Land. Voyages to the Corea. With an Account of its Geography, History, Productions, etc. By ERNEST OPPERT. With Charts and Illustrations. 8vo, pp. 351. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

SCHOLARS Who are interested in church history will be gratified to learn that Dr. Gieseler's erudite and comprehensive Text-Book of Church History' is now completed, and that the fifth and concluding volume has been published. It will be remembered that the preceding volumes were edited and translated by the late Professor Henry B. Smith, of the Union Theological Seminary, in this city; and he had begun and finished 123 pages of the first part of this final volume when his hand was arrested by death. The remainder of the volume, with the exception of 221 pages, which were executed by Professor Stearns, of Albion, Michigan, was translated by Miss Mary L. Robinson, the daughter of the celebrated pioneer of Palestine exploration. The care and faithfulness of the translation are vouched for by Dr. Schaff in the preface. The period embraced in this volume is the fourth of the periods under which the history was treated by Dr. Gieseler, namely, that from the Reformation to the present time-A.D. 1517-1854. The portion completed by Dr. Smith, being the first division of the fourth period, comprises the history of the Roman Catholic Church from the Reformation and through the period of the Council of Trent to the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, and also a history of the theological sciences and of the Oriental Churches for the same period.

A Text-Book of Church History. By Dr. JouN C. L. GIESELER. Translated and Edited by HENRY B. SMITH, Professor in the Union Theological Seminary, New York. Vol. V.-A.D. 1517-1854. From the Reformation to the Present Time. Completed by MARY A. ROBINSON. SVO, pp. 670. New York: Harper and Brothers.