ART. VIII.-NEW PUBLICATIONS.

The Revelation of St. John, Expounded for those who Search the Scriptures. By E. W. HENGSTENBERG, Doctor and Professor of Theology in Berlin. Translated from the original by the Rev. PATRICK FAIRBAIRN, author of "Typology of Scripture," &c. Vol. I. New-York: Robert Carter and Brother. 1852. 8vo. Pp. 521.

The Messrs. Carter deserve the thanks of biblical scholars and of all thoughtful readers of the Scriptures, for this prompt republication of the translation of Hengstenberg's Exposition of the Revelation. This volume contains all that Hengstenberg has published, and is the first of the entire work; and the author has sent it forth by itself from a sense of duty, as we learn from his Preface, to endeavor according to the best of (his) ability, that the rich treasures of counsel and comfort which the Lord has provided for us in this book, should as soon as possible be made accessible to those who desire to possess it." An Introduction of forty-four pages discusses the time of the composition of the Revelation. The author maintains in opposition to Ewald and Lücke, that it was composed in the reign of Domitian; and he fortifies his view by a clear and able statement of numerous external and internal proofs. The Exposition, which follows, extends to the end of the 12th chapter of the Revelation. We cannot presume to speak with authority of the distinctive merits of this work; but what we know by personal experience of the thorough scholarship and the exact learning of the author, and of his honesty of spirit and sincere piety, marred as we believe these qualities are by his want of liberality, is for us a sure guarantee of the intrinsic value and usefulness of the Exposition. We wish to call attention especially to the fact, that this work is not meant exclusively for theologians and biblical scholars; it contains but little philological matter, and is written in a style suited for all intelligent readers, who earnestly wish to increase their acquaintance with the contents of the most interesting, though difficult, portion of the New-Tcstament which it aims to expound.

The Maiden and Married Life of Mary Powell, afterwards Mistress Mil

ton.

Essays from the London Times; a Collection of Personal and Historical Sketches.

The Yellowplush Papers. By W. M. THACKERAY.

Recollections of a Journey through Tartary, Thibet and China, during the years 1844, 1845, and 1846. By M. Huc, Missionary Priest of the Congregation of St. Lazarus. 2 vols. New-York: 12mo. D. Appleton & Co. 1852.

These are successive volumes of a "Popular Library," which the Messrs. Appleton, with their usual discernment and enterprise, have projected and are fast carrying forward, with the laudable design of forming a permanent classical series of the best literature," adapted in subject-matter, form and price, to "the widest popular circulation.'

The first of these volumes is a work of fiction, but in a high sense is full

of reality, as it is eminently true to human nature and character, and has all the living force of probability. It is founded upon Milton's ill-matched first marriage, the misadventures of which, as is well known, not only clouded the great poet's heart and home, but also wrought a mischievous influence in his head and his study, and by bringing about marvelous changes in his theological opinions, resulted in those elaborate arguments for divorce, entitled "The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce," the Judgment of Martin Bucer, concerning Divorce, and the "Tetrachordon." In the form of a diary, beginning with her seventeenth birthday, we have a narrative, in charmingly natural style, and in the quaint English of the 17th century, of the young girl's merry home and country-life in her father's mansion; her courtship and her marriage to Mr. Milton, whose years were double her own, and his tastes and habits point-blank different; of the first four weeks' very hard trying to be happy in the city, sombre, bookish home of her husband, far away "from fresh Ayre and greene Fields;" of the visit to her father's, and the troubles it led to; the succeeding months of separation, and finally of the reconciliation and re-union, "the clear shining after rain," when she became "the most joyfulle happy wife of Mr. John Milton." The subject is extremely well managed by the writer, and the work exhibits rare powers of conception and composition.

The "Essays from the London Times" are a very remarkable collection of literary papers for a daily journal, and probably no other newspaper in the world can furnish a collection of like ability. Devoted to topics of great and permanent interest in biography, history and general literature, they are written with marked originality by men who were masters of their subjects, and who evidently rank high among the literary men of England. The articles on Lord Nelson, Howard, the French Revolution, and on Dean Swift, are especially valuable; and it was a happy and useful idea to transfer them from the columns of the Times to a more lasting and generally accessible literary form.

"The Yellowplush Papers" is a characteristic work of Mr. Thackeray, and will be welcomed, in their present shape, by all in this country who relish that popular author's keen wit, caustic satire, and painfully truthful portraitures of life and character.

The last of the above mentioned publications is one of the most curious and original works of the day. It is the narrative of a three years' missionary tour of two Catholic priests, M. Huc and M. Gabet, in Thibet, Tartary and China, among regions and tribes of people, concerning whose institutions, and manners, and customs, comparatively little has hitherto been published or even known. The journey failed of its principal object, the establishment of a mission in the capital of Thibet; but it nevertheless yielded most valuable fruits in the solid as well as entertaining information which was gained and is here communicated concerning the countries through which lay the route of the travelers, the character of the people, their forms of government and religion, and their habits of domestic and social life. M. Huc and his companion braved all varieties of hardships, and exposures to peril and suffering, with a fearless, resolute spirit, and apparently animated by a sincere desire to be the bearers of a purer religion to the idolatrous nations to whom they had been sent. The work is written with clearness and intelligence, and we must fain believe with honesty and veracity, although it tells some most marvelous stories which one is sorely tempted to reject as pure inventions. The writer, though for the most part simple-minded, (at least as it appears,) and abundant in good faith, yet now and then strikes into a vein of pleasant and knowing humor,

that adds much to the vivacity of the narrative. Altogether these two volumes make up a remarkable and an uncommonly readable work. Sober readers and scholars may gain from it large accessions to their knowledge of some of the remotest regions and nations of Asia; the lovers of the descriptive and the marvelous will find it abundant in fresh pictures of strange scenery, and in wonderful incident and adventure; and Protestant Christians of all communions will yield their sympathy to the evidence it embodies of an honest and earnest intention to plant the religion of the cross among nations immersed in idolatry and superstition.

A Pilgrimage to Egypt, embracing a Diary on the Nile; with Observations Illustrative of the Manners, Customs and Institutions of the People, and of the Present Condition of the Antiquities and Ruins. With numerous Engravings. By J. V. C. SMITH. Boston: Gould & Lincoln. 1852. 12mo. Pp. 383.

This is an interesting book, to be followed by a similar one on Palestine, in which Dr. Smith has recorded the results of his personal observations and experience in a recent tour in the East. So many works of this kind have lately appeared, that any new aspirant to public favor must have some real merit, in order to gain readers for his pages. And such merit Dr. Smith certainly seems to have. He writes with freshness and vigor, and has the happy art of making the reader the companion of his travels, and the witness of what he has himself seen and experienced. It is a very spirited and readable book, and is fitted to give clear conceptions of the storied regions, of whose people and antiquities it treats. We shall be glad to see the promised work on Palestine.

The Annals of the English Bible. By CHRISTOPHER ANDERSON. Abridged and continued by Samuel Irenæus Prime, Secretary of the American Bible Society. New-York: Robert Carter & Brother, No. 285 Broadway. 1852. 8vo. Pp. 549.

It is a singular fact that, until the publication of the work of Mr. Anderson, there existed no complete history of our English Scriptures. Closely connected as is the English Bible with the spiritual welfare and with the entire civilization of the millions who speak the English tongue, no one had undertaken the sacred task of investigating and gathering into a continuous record the various facts pertaining to its history. So singular a deficiency in the literature of the English language exists, however, no longer. It is well supplied by Mr. Anderson's work, which comprehends the Annals of the English Bible, brought down through the three centuries of its existence to the present time; describing the fierce struggles and persecutions attending its origin, and tracing out all its subsequent victorious and beneficent progress. It is a work of great learning and research, prosecuted with laborious diligence, and with a zealous regard to the cause of Christian truth; many important facts and curious incidents, needful to the knowledge of the subject, it rescues from oblivion, and puts together in their right connection; and these, along with whatever has been hitherto known, but has existed only in detached parts, it unites together into a continuous and entire history. In the introduction, we have, along with other preliminary topics of interest, a narrative of the labors of Wicliffe, which resulted, in 1381, many years before the inven tion of printing, in the English manuscript version, from the Latin, of the entire Bible. The body of the work consists of five books, of which the first four are devoted to the history of the Bible in England and in Scot

land, from 1500 down to 1650; and the fifth covers the period, in Great Britain, from the Commonwealth to Queen Victoria, or from 1650 to 1844. The closing chapter of the book contains a narrative of the establishment and operations of the principal modern associations for the printing and circulation of the Bible, and especially of the British and Foreign Bible Society, and of the American Bible Society. Appended to the work is a valuable chronological list of all the early editions of English Bibles and Testaments, from 1525 to 1611, with the names of the printers and of the places where the editions were issued. We regard this as a most useful and instructive work. It teaches most impressively the presence of God in His written Word, overruling for it by his Providence the plans and works of men, and clearing before it a victorious path through their indifference and their stubborn opposition. It is a striking fact, standing out prominent all along the line of these annals of our English Bible, that in every important stage of its history, its success has never been owing to human powers, either temporal or spiritual, neither to crowned nor to mitred heads, but generally in spite of their virulent hostility; its destinies have been signally controlled by the Sovereign Disposer of all events, who has raised up individual men from the masses, and made them mighty in the defence and propagation of the truth.

The present volume is, as we learn from the title page, an abridgment. Mr. Anderson's work is there described as "abridged and continued" by Mr. Prime, Secretary of the American Bible Society. We are not in possession of the original work, but we understand that it covers two volumes octavo. We miss a preface to the American work, explaining the manner in which it has been prepared, and how and wherein it has been continued. We are, therefore, entirely unable to judge of the labors of Mr. Prime, but we presume, that, at all events, the brief sketch of the operations of the American Bible Society was added by him.

Dollars and Cents. By AMY LOTHROP. 2 vols. New-York: George P. Putnam. 1852.

We are afraid that the author made a mistake in the title of this book. It may strike intelligent readers, either as too odd, or as indicative of something rather trivial and unworthy of perusal. For ourselves, however, finding Mr. Putnam's name on it, and seeing it put forth as "uniform" with the "Wide, Wide World," we were prepossessed in its favor, and on trial found it a very entertaining and instructive tale of life and manners, and especially illustrative of American society. We cannot help thinking that the work has much closer affinities with "Queechy" and its predecessor, than those which grow out of a mere uniformity of printing and binding. It has many of the same characteristics; its scenes and characters are drawn from similar sources, and with like fidelity and freshness; there are characters, indeed, in both so similar, that they night belong to the same persons, at different periods of their lives. The style, too, is not unlike; marked by the same simp'icity and truthfulness, the same sprightliness of tone and agreeable humor; and while we meet with passages no less aptly and racily expressed, we also find others which are equally wanting in the toil of revision. And what is still more evident, there is the same high moral and religious spirit and the same salutary lessons of human life. In short, we think there must be some natural, or at least literary, relationship between Miss Elizabeth Wetherell and this new comer, Miss Amy Lothrop. At all events, they are laborers in this same department of fiction, and give promise of doing good service in it.

Queechy. By ELIZABETH WETHERELL, author of "The Wide, Wide World." 2 vols. New-York: G. P. Putnam. 1852.

12mo.

It is, perhaps, superfluous to say anything of this work, which is already a great favorite with the reading public. It was at once seized with avidity by multitudes, who had read with profit, as well as delight, "The Wide, Wide World," and who had been for some weeks on the tiptoe of expectation, from the announcement of another book from the same pen. Now that it has at last come, it certainly does not altogether disappoint the high expectation entertained of it; still, we are bound to say, that it is open to some objections on artistic grounds. Miss Flida, the beautiful heroine, whom everybody must love and honor, is made in some of the early chapters to hold rather too high discourse for a child scarcely in her teens, which in a dialogue with grown-up men and women, some of them highly cultivated, certainly is rather forced and stilted. The conduct of the story, too, and in many places the language, bears indubitable marks of hasty preparation. Careful revision, and a longer interval before publication, even if it had fallen far short of the Horatian precept, would have improved the work by compression, retouching, and especially, we think, by the omission of some of the weeping scenes, which, in spite of their interest, are a little too numerous, and require of the amiable characters of the work, and perhaps of the readers, rather too costly an outlay of emotion and of tears. But for all this, this work has real merit, and is unquestionably most attractive and interesting. It has a charm about its pages that wins a way for it to many places, and to the hands and the hearts of many readers, for the most part strangers to the department of literature to which it belongs. It comes forth from a bright, fresh nature, a mind eminently lively and enthusiastic, gifted with imagination and creative power, and from a heart and character pervaded by a spirit of genuine truthfulness and intelligent and unaffected piety. Its descriptions of home and social life, and the views and opinions they embody, are the growth of an observing and vigorous intellect; and while they instruct and entertain the reader, are eminently fitted to exert a genial moral and religious influence. We hope these volumes may have a yet wider circulation, and that we may by and by be tasked by the gifted author to describe her path into still higher regions of fictitious literature.

A Book for a Corner. By LEIGH HUNT. 1 vol. 12mo. New-York: G.

P. Putnam.

Up the Rhine. By THOMAS HOOD. Two parts, in 2 vols. 12mo. G. P.

The

Mr. Putnam, too, is in the field, with his usual enterprise and intelligence, with a series of books for the people, entitled "Putnam's Semi-monthly Library" for travelers and the home circle. The above volumes are the last published of the series, forming numbers nine, ten and eleven. series is intended to furnish, at a low price, books worth reading; they are taken from all departments of literature, and are printed on excellent paper, in fair legible type, put into convenient form, bound in strong paper covers, are mailable like the magazine, easily carried in the traveler's pocket, every volume containing upwards of two hundred pages-all at the low price of twenty-five cents each. The first of the above volumes is a very readable book, consisting of passages from various authors, collected and edited by Leigh Hunt. Hood's Up the Rhine, which is contained in the remaining two, is a work we have long known; and we have often been surprised