Little Poems for Little Children, suitable for Memorizing and for Recitation at School and at Home. Compiled by Valeria J. Campbell. Chicago. The Inter state Publishing Company. 16mo. pp. 203.

The compiler produced this book as an aid in her own School at Des Moines, and has placed in it all the exercises taught there, including over two hundred choice mottoes. There is a couplet, verse or poem on each well-known flower, fruit and holiday, besides many about birds and animals with which children are familiar. Many excellent proverbs and maxims are brought together, each teaching a useful lesson, which when learned in childhood is not easily forgotten. The publishers have put the work in clear type on good paper, and in tasteful binding.

The United States of Yesterday and of To-morrow. By William Barrows, D.D. Boston. Roberts Brothers. 1888. 16mo. pp. 432.

The Introduction thus sets forth the purpose of this work, and the advantages possessed by the author in dealing with his subject;

"This book has been written to answer questions. As the author in earlier days had spent several years beyond the Mississippi, and much time and travel there since in official work, during which he made ten tours over the border, and in the East has devoted much labor to public addresses and lectures on our new country, it was quite natural that a miscellaneous information should be solicited from him concerning the territory between the Alleghanies and Pacific."

The information contained in the work is grouped into the following topics, each treated in a separate chapter: How large is the West? Surprising Distances in the United States, The Six Growths of the United States, Growth in Settlements, Ancient Chicago, The "Great American Desert," Large Landholdings in the United States, Wild Life on the Border, Pioneering in Education, Lynch Law, Eastern Jealousy and Neglect of the West, The Railway System of the West, The Empire of the Future. To these is added a fourteenth chapter, entitled "Conclusions," in which well-based predictions are put forth, and solemn counsels are offered.

These several topics are treated in a most instructive and interesting manner, and deeply impress one with the conviction that "Truth is stranger than fiction," so vast a territorial field is opened to our view, such wonderful changes have been wrought, such enchanting possibilities of yesterday have been more than realized to-day. Dr. Barrows has written with a purpose, and that is to bring the American people to see what a providential opportunity is afforded them for a grand and enduring Nationality, if they are wise to heed the conditions on which its greatness and perpetuity depend.

Several notices, unavoidably crowded out of this number, will appear in the July issue.

All the works noticed under the head of "Contemporary Literature" will be found on sale at our Publishing House.

ARTICLE XVI.

What Protestant Liberty Owes to the Dutch.

THE history of great epochs in the progress of civilization will usually divide into two phases, between which the distinction is a pronounced difference: the attaining of a great boon, and the retaining of it. The second endeavor usually falls to a new generation and a new set of men, the heroes whereof are hardly less meritorious than those who won the prize for others to preserve and protect. The uniformity with which the struggle to attain is followed by the struggle to retain, is so marked that it may be said to inhere in the general law of progress, alike of individuals, of nations and of institutions.

Men who from nothing have fought their way to great wealth, not infrequently find the succeeding phase of the situation quite beyond their talents and strength: the proportion of this class who sink back to the estate of indigence is ominously large. Those who starting in poverty have won fortune to retain it, will generally testify that they found it more of a task to keep than it was to acquire. The year, day and place —1215, June 15, Runnymede-can be given when and where the Barons of England extorted from King John the Great Charter, the archetype of every form of constitutional liberty in the history of nations. In fact, as a form it was the work of a day. But years, days and places enter into the long, bitter and bloody struggle to root the seed of liberty in the concessions of succeeding monarchs, the habits of a people, and the long list of precedents which make the constitution of the British realm. The Reformation which as an organized Dissent may be said to have been formally won by Luther, and which found its magna charter in the Treaty of Passau (July 30, 1552), was in constant peril until the outcome of the Thirty Years' War firmly anchored it in the Treaty of Westphalia (Oct. 24, 1641). Those now in venerable years have memories of the heroes who, under Washington, won the Inde

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pendence which made the American Republic a possibility. But a few weeks ago, the Centennial of the formulated com pact which made the Republic a unit was commemorated at Philadelphia. It seems but as yesterday that the awful strug gle to keep what the fathers so heroically won, came to a suc cessful issue at Appomattox Court House. We e are not sure but that the "Holding the Fort"-whereof poets sing-has cost more endurance, has evoked greater patriotic ardor, and sublimer heroic sacrifice, than were required for the winning thereof.

The status of modern civilization which permits and encourages the utmost freedom in the search for truth, in the asserting of one's convictions, and in the worship of God in such form as the individual worshipper may elect,-rights held with but the single reservation that they shall not be exercised in a way to intefere with the same rights in others—is regarded by all who do not deem the status as the greatest evil, as unmistakably the greatest boon. It is integral in Protestant liberty. It is not indeed in all communities intelligently apprehended, and various influences—mainly social ones—are made to modify and restrict it. But as a bald formula hardly any Protestant would think of disputing it. As a formula it is unequivocally affirmed by all: in practice it is held with at least an exemption from pains and penalties—it is the practical estate of every one who has the courage and the manli ness to insist on his undisputed right. Our hold upon this chief of social and civil blessings is, in this age, and in Protes tant lands, so much a matter of course, that it is with difficulty we consciously estimate its value, or take in to our thought the obstacles that have been overcome in the winning and also in the retaining it, or do justice to the heroes and martyrs who “sailed through bloody seas" in order safely to hand it down to those who were to come after them.

The distinction between the achieving of the inestimable blessing and the subsequent maintaining it holds with great clearness in the history of civil and religious liberty as the outcome of the Protestant movement. The Protestant world has

been thoughtfully and appreciatively just to Savonarola in Florence, to Huss and Jerome in Bohemia, to the Albigenses in South France, to most enlightened, most comprehensive, most efficient of all-Wickliffe and his Lollards in England, and to the great Luther, himself the child of the Protestantism he, more than any other, was destined to formulate and enshrine in institutions: these and their compeers "won the fort." We do not think that the Protestant writers have been equally thoughtful, equally discriminating, equally just to the memories of the great souls who, in the face of difficulties not less serious, and in the display of heroic constancy not less conspicuous, have "held the fort." This article has its occasion in the belief that until quite recent years but incidental, faint and half-intelligent justice has been done the most heroic of the heroes. This is true of the scholars; while the great mass of the Protestant world, generous to those who certainly did royal service, yet need information and a quickening of gratitude, in respect to those whose struggles, courage, sacrifices and efficiency were literally imperial.

A preliminary word is needful to the purport that the complete toleration,-toleration with no restriction in the search for truth, the inculcation of it, and the individual right to worship as the individual elects, other than what a respect for other people's rights imposes-which is the great Protestant boon, was by no means in the thought or the intent or even the willingness of the pioneer dissenters from papal authority. Laud in England attempted to impose Episcopacy upon the churches in Scotland, and enforced a decree to that effect by the most horrid cruelties. The Covenanters not only signed an agreement to rebel, which was right and brave: very soon after they put forth a Solemn League and Covenant which was not only designed to protect them from Episcopal enactments, but also, and exactly after the manner of Archbishop Laud, to commit them to the intolerance of forcibly forbidding Episcopacy and Popery both in England and Scotland even to those who heartily believed in them!1 Puritanism in the New

1" The Solemn League and Covenant was a compact entered into in 1643 between England and Scotland, binding the United Kingdoms to mutual aid in the extir

World was hardly less bitter towards dissent from itself, than Episcopacy had been towards it. In the early period of the Protestant agitation the real liberty was extremely incipient. A few gifted souls saw and felt the logic of the situation, and rose to the full height of a complete toleration,—notably Sir Harry Vane in England, Roger Williams in New England, and, greatest of all and in view of the age in which he lived, about a generation later than Luther, the great Stadtholder of Holland, the Washington of his people and his age,-William Prince of Orange. But for the great mass, even of enlightened people, it has taken centuries to discover the fallacy of contemning opinions as sinful, and the irrationality of forcing beliefs on unwilling minds.

This however is to be said: though simply incipient in Protestantism at the outset of its history, toleration was really in it. Whoever dissented from the traditional faith and worship, did so of his own free will and determination. The very act of protesting was an act of private judgment. He who of his own choice protests against an existing order, certainly cannot, in consistency, object when some one else protests against him -against the order he would establish. As the oak is in the acorn, the great blessing of Protestant liberty is in the simplest form or degree of protest by anybody.

With the papal hierarchy however the case is not only dif ferent—it is essentially different. That hierarchy makes the claim that by divine appointment it is the depositary of saving truth; that it is commissioned to enforce the acceptance of that truth and to crush out heretical opinions not simply as erroneous but as ruinous to souls; and that to this end the keys are put into its hands. In such a pretence there is no room pation of popery and prelacy, and the preservation of true religion and liberty throughout the realm. It was drawn up by Alexander Henderson, approved by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland Aug. 17, ratified by the Convention of the Estates, and accepted and subscribed Sept. 25 by the English Parliament and the Westminster Assembly" (McClintock & Strong). England at this time was under the control of the Roundhead or Presbyterian Parliament. Charles I. refused to sign it, but Charles II. accepted it with reservation. The intent of the compact was good, but the method included the extirpation of popery and prelacy by force.