immense, and what seemed at first "a mighty deep," proves on inspection to be an inundated flat. No American journal that aims at anything more than vulgar entertainment succeeds, in the market sense, or does more than support itself, and that hardly. We are not speaking of newspapers, some of which, with higher aims than mere amusement, yield pecuniary profit. These follow a law of their own. Their success is explained in part by local or political and denominational causes. Neither do we speak of periodicals devoted to science or ecclesiastical interests, but solely of literary journals. The only work professing this character which flourishes commercially, is Harper's Magazine. Not certainly from any intrinsic merit; rather from the studious avoidance of any merit that will not "pay" in immediate, calculable cash returns. It flourishes commercially, because it is conducted on strictly commercial principles. It addresses itself to the greatest number and the most universal demand. It caters to the popular taste without affecting to educate it. In this sense it is a clever periodical, and well deserves the success it has found, namely a market.

Putnam's Monthly, a few years since, was conceived in a different spirit and projected on quite another scale. It would lead, not follow, and sought to elevate, instead of flattering, the public mind. This selfimposed mission it faithfully pursued, and deserves a nation's thanks. But in aiming at moral ends it sacrificed, as might be expected, pecuniary profit, and while morally successful, proved, as a money investment, a failure.

It has now commenced a new career,* with new auspices and some modifications of its pristine type, reluctant concessions to a barbarous taste and the silly requirements of a paying journal with a pampered and lax generation, under-taught and over-fed. We fancy we detect a latent sarcasm in the statement on the cover regarding "the large and gratifying increase," &c., and we fully sympathize with the brave conductor in any disgust he may feel at the rudeness and puerility which demand in a journal the attractions of a primer. Devoutly do we wish that his capital were equal to his idea, and that the experiment of a high-toned and purely literary journal might succeed. But if woodcuts and "little-jokers" are indispensable conditions of material success, we do not know that an editor is called to sacrifice himself to the dignity of letters.

With

Meanwhile, we are glad to perceive that the business management, as well as the redaction, of this worthy periodical is in the hands of the genial littérateur whose enterprising pen has made Putnam's Monthly what it is, and whose "Potiphar Papers," first published in its pages, have placed him in the foremost rank of American humorists. such conduct it will be sure to merit, and can hardly fail to secure, the hearty patronage of the reading world, as "a pleasant, popular periodical, a cheerful companion, laughing, chatting, and singing, never too grave or speculative or profound."

* Putnam's Monthly. New York: Miller and Curtis, 321 Broadway. Since, as we notice, united with "Emerson's Magazine."

Eight numbers of the "Historical Magazine," published in this city, must have satisfied all who have seen it, that in that journal we are to have a truly valuable addition to our conveniences and resources for historical study. The Editor has put himself into correspondence with the legion of Historical Societies through the country. He publishes some of the best papers read before them, papers like Mr. Deane's on Hutchinson, for instance, which we should not know where else to turn for, and possibly might not find in print at all, and keeps up the record of their meetings.

He also opens a department for that mass of miscellaneous gossip with Correspondents which in England has given the name to the Magazine known as "Notes and Queries." From some experience of these "Departments," we expected no results of value from the "Note and Query" side of this Magazine. But the Editor has held a tight rein. There is very little of such dreary wasted work in these numbers, as we half feared might be, and a good deal of real historical detail. When he has worked through the inevitable discussions as to the name "Yankee," Praed's Charade, and a few other of such tough logs at which every new splitter tries his hand, this section of his very valuable journal will be the most interesting of all.

One of the essays of which we have spoken as having a peculiar interest for us is contained in the April number. It is a contribution by Mr. Charles Deane on the various editions of Hutchinson's History, and the circumstances attending its publication. The history of that really remarkable book is all entangled with the difficulties of the times which poor Hutchinson himself found so hard, and it is so confused, as to have caused some difficulty to book-buyers and historians. Mr. Deane's present paper unravels all the confusion of the matter. It is well worthy the distinction it has received, in being elegantly printed in a separate form for private circulation.

We may say, in passing, that in the midst of all the modern interest about the early history of the New England Colonies, we find no better reading than the old Hutchinson. It is very clear that he has a century the advantage of us in many points relating to the character of the actors of whom he speaks. He had also access to some authorities which we have lost; and we do not find any later author who discriminates more soundly as to the relative value of the authorities employed.

OCCASIONAL DISCOURSES.

THE death of Dr. Lunt of Quincy,* as he was tracing the route of the exodus of the Israelites, was an event which called forth the regret of a circle much wider than the church where he so faithfully ministered. It has been noticed, in public as in private, as the death of a ripe scholar should be noticed, from whom the public had received

* A Discourse in Commemoration of Rev. William Parsons Lunt, D. D., delivered at Quincy, Mass., on Sunday, June 7, 1857. By CHANDLER ROBBINS. Also the last Sermon preached by MR. LUNT, December 28, 1856. With an Appendix. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co. 1857.

much, and had good right to expect much more. On the 7th of June, the twenty-second anniversary of his settlement at Quincy, and immediately after we had the tidings of his death, his friend Dr. Robbins preached at Quincy a discourse in commemoration of his life and services. This discourse-full of tender sympathies, of generous appreciation, and of Christian consolation - is now published, and with it Dr. Lunt's last sermon from that same pulpit. Both sermons are from the same text, - which applies with singular felicity to both occasions: "And he led them forth by the right way, that they might go to a city of habitation." Ps. cvii. 7. Surely every one who knew the deep reverence and affection with which Dr. Lunt regarded the providential history recorded in Scripture, felt that in the circumstances of his death there was something which redeemed it from the ordinary sadness of death in a foreign land. A Christian minister dies away from his home. If that must be so, death could find no place or time more in harmony with a Christian student's life, than when it comes on the confines of the desert, - in the midst of the solution of its eternal problems, and under the shadow of its consecrated mountains. "Where should the shepherd sleep, but among the flock?" said he himself at the funeral of his aged predecessor. In such a scene, that question seems to have but one answer. But, in fact, the Christian student has more than one duty, and so more than one fitting deathbed.

"Where should the soldier sleep, but where he fell ?"

WE have in print one of the Inaugural Addresses * delivered in the Chapel of the University on the occasion of the inauguration of two new Professors at the Divinity School; an occasion welcomed with the deepest interest by all who have any hopes for the future of that institution.

Mr. Ellis is to be the Professor of Systematic Theology. To carry out completely the duties of that chair, without fear on the one hand or favor on the other, in a school which has aimed and still aims at an "unsectarian teaching of Theology," is no easy duty. It is, however, a duty which every one who heard his vigorous Address, and every one who reads it, will acknowledge to be an inevitable duty; and yet more, they will find in the generous tone of this Address, and in its accurate distinctions, a good voucher that the right man has been put into the right place, now that the duty is to be specifically intrusted to one officer.

The Address is introduced, very appropriately, by a sketch of the history of this School, in its foundation, and particularly in the views of the liberal men who first endowed it. We are glad this sketch is on record. That part of the Address which follows, the exposition of the field which the new Professorship covers in the daily work of the School, may be well read, and even studied, by the gentlemen who are to be trained there.

Inaugural Address delivered in the Chapel of Harvard College, Tuesday, July 14, 1857, on his Induction to the Professorship of Systematic Theology in the Divinity School of the University, by GEORGE E. ELLIS. Boston: Crosby, Nichols, & Co. 1857.

We wish our lines of severance and controversy were so slight, that there were room to hope that language so wise and generous might be read in the communions which support other institutions of theological training. It is a pleasure to copy words so hopeful, true, and brave as these:

"I will try to convey: it will be most inadequately — the noble, the generous, the Christian idea and object of the founders of this School. "They thought that amid these retired and bookish scenes, where antiquity had begun to gather the calm and soberness of true wisdom, its old lessons of conflict might be studied for new and diviner uses. Just as when yonder dome was reared over our Observatory a few years ago, its munificent patrons conceived that the old heavens might reveal new secrets to wise and patient gazers, or at least help them to verify and arrange in apter forms and in more correct details the knowledge and science already possessed by the world, so too thought our founders that their School of Divinity might be free and hopeful in the search for truth. That Observatory was not reared under the vain delusion that the boldest instruments would secularize the sky, or subvert the order of the spheres, or diminish or increase the wonders which God had wrought there. But still that dome would never have been built nor pierced by the inquisitive tubes and lenses of a progressive science, had the dull persuasion been received that the old world and the old instruments had read out all the heavens, or imposed the condition that henceforward the upper realms of God should be studied by the human chart, and not from the divine original. The old charts, whether of earth or of the heavens, are put to the best service when the student is using them, not only as authorities, but as guides onward. So thought the Christian men who aimed to connect with this University a school for the study of Christian doctrine and history. They had a religious experience of their own. They had spent years of life's youthful and mature zeal upon the records and the traditions of the Gospel. They were familiar with the range which controversy covered, and thought they apprehended limitations upon its materials, and had felt a check upon its embittering spirit. They cherished a conviction which has cheered and quickened many earnest minds, that there is a fellowship between believers which is not a fellowship in a creed. They conceived of a result from various types of experience and from different methods of speculation, which would harmonize, if only in love and reverence for truth, all who were seeking for it in the large, free fields which God had opened for them. They knew that, as all the great circles of a sphere must twice cross each other in their sweep, so there would be points of contact and of identity between the disciples of the Divine Science. Such men, believing all this, and inexpressibly cheered by the belief, are to be found now in all the communions of the Christian Church. They have never yet prevailed in their own fellowships against the power of tradition and the limitations of sectarian authority. Heretofore they have always been withstood when they have sought to put their views in the way of being recognized. But every time they are discomfited, their defeat multiplies their number, and prepares for the day that is to be."

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LITERARY INTELLIGENCE.

THE following titles are taken from the latest English book-lists: — A History of Civilization in England. By H. T. Buckle. Vol. I. A third and cheaper edition of Whewell's History of the Inductive Sciences. 3 vols.

Fourth (revised) edition of Mill's Treatise on Political Economy.

A third Series of Robertson's Sermons, with portrait.

A second edition of the beautiful volume narrating McClure's Discovery of the Northwest Passage.

In course of publication are,

Squier on the Hieroglyphics of Mexico (8vo, plates, 4to), and on the "Aboriginal Languages" of Central America.

"Legends of the Madonna," and "History of Our Lord," making the third and fourth series of Mrs. Jameson's Sacred and Legendary Art.

The third and fourth volumes of Bunsen's “Egypt's Place in Universal History" (the fourth, fifth, and sixth of the German).

A new edition of Johnson's Dictionary, in three volumes, quarto, edited by Latham, to be published in monthly parts.

Translations of Aristotle's Metaphysics, and of Pliny's Natural History, the 'last in six volumes. (Bohn's Classical Library.)

A "new and entire edition of Kepler's works" is in course of publication in Germany, edited by Dr. Frisch. To be contained in eight volumes.

Of French announcements, we find little else than history and memoirs, even this department showing a strong contrast to the wealth of the English press. A General History of European_Diplomacy, in two volumes, by Fr. Combes, and a new edition of Amadée Thierry's "Histoire des Gaules" are the most attractive titles.

In science, "The Essay on the Principle of Universal Life, or, Theory of Fire," says the Revue des Deux Mondes, "introduces us into quite another region. The author has attempted great problems; and, if we may question the views he has put forth, we cannot at least deny the interest of the inquiries he pursues, and the investigations he has undertaken. By the side of applied science, it is well, after all, that theoretical science should not be forgotten."

SCIENTIFIC INTELLIGENCE.

THE 45th Asteroid was discovered at Paris, June 27, 1857.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science met at Montreal, August 12-19, 1857. About 130 papers were read, chiefly of limited interest, merely special additions to knowledge. Rev. G. Jones reported observations establishing his view that the zodiacal light is a ring around the earth. Professor Leconte proved that solar light does not retard combustion. Professor H. L. Smith has invented a new form of achromatic telescope, of great value. Professor Bache has demonstrated the existence of a large personal equation between himself and one of his assistants; in other words, shown that it takes an appreciable time, about six tenths of a second, for a sensation to reach his assistant's consciousness. These seem to be the only positive contributions to science made at this meeting, which would be of interest to the historian of thought.