they treat. This is inevitable where one gives his entire strength to a specialty in religious work, and seeks to make the greatest possible impression on isolated points in the labors of one week or six. Such a theory of working calls for the high-pressure system of labor, the brevity of which is naturally and necessarily determined by its intensity. It induces and encourages spasmodic rather than healthy action in the spiritual body. It leaves no even pulse in the piety of the church. We can easily see how a man, who has never been a pastor, or labored long with one people, as the author has not, should write such sermons; and can see, too, how greatly he would change them were he to settle down into the proper work of a gospel minister.

The Puritans: or, The Church, Court, and Parliament of England during the Reigns of Edward VI. and Queen Elizabeth. By SAMUEL HOPKINS. In Three Volumes. Boston Gould & Lincoln. 1860-1861.

THE success of American writers in the department of History within the last twenty years is without a parallel in modern letters. It is becoming a matter of national distinction, suggestive of some special genius for this kind of study in the American type of intellectual growth and culture. Three names already adorn our literature as historians which are as familiar as household words. Whether another has appeared worthy to rank with these "first three" is not quite certain; in fact, we do not think Mr. Hopkins' warmest friends will claim such excellence for his work. Yet it is good enough to high ambition, if not the

make a reputation which should content a highest.

It is a difficult question to determine what constitutes the best historical style. Authors who used to give law in this realm would not be accepted as final authorities now. Rollin will not do for these times, nor Gibbon. But in getting rid of stiffness and stateliness, we do not want the prose-run-mad rhapsodies of Carlyle's "French Revolution," nor the hop-skip-and-jump agility of some of the Parisian chroniclers. Mr. Hopkins is very vivacious in his handling of events and persons sometimes more so than suits our taste. He often takes liberties in this direction which have been deemed the peculiar license of the fiction-makers. If history should not be dull, (as it never need be,) it should maintain a chaste dignity, which these volumes do not always observe. We would rather not have the imaginary speeches and conversations of the old classic writers revived in modern history; we have more of it here than those early standards of

the art admitted. This is not necessary to the due effect of the story. It is not pleasant thus to be reminded that one is perusing a blended page of fact and fancy, where the mind would rather rest in the conviction that the whole is authentic.

But the substantial merits of this history are undeniably greatgreater perhaps than the rather light and garish costume which it is made to wear may at first indicate. If our Puritan fathers have to step to a livelier measure than was their wont, still these are the genuine worthies of that age of trial and of strength, which are here living and walking and working in the heat and dust of a day that was of no bland and balmy atmosphere. The solid godliness of that period shines like the beaten gold of the sanctuary in these persistent, persecuted Christians. The author sketches character with a free handand the canvas is a crowded one. Some of the best, and not a few of the worst human beings that ever lived and shaped their age are here drawn in glory and shame perpetual. Mary Stuart is spoiled of not a little of her factitious attractions, and Elizabeth is not made a saint, nor her prime councillors either. Possibly she would have come nearer it without the help of some of them, both clerical and lay. It is humiliating to see how largely mere personal pique and hatreds entered into these atrocious proceedings. The dominant party cared as little as it well could for anything that deserved the name of principle, and allowed its pride and passion to carry it through a struggle for place, and class-distinctions, and prescriptions ecclesiastical and civil, which would be ridiculous but that the means used to preserve them were so cruel. Mr. H. writes in warm sympathy with his subject, politically and religiously. His volumes abound with individual sketches of persons in whom the reader may be expected to feel a special interest; brief, bright, pathetic monographs set in the general field of his survey. The whole work has much of the fascination of an elaborate historical novel; but the copious foot-notes and references continually assure us that we are mainly in the real world. The volumes can hardly fail of great popularity.

Religio Medici, A Letter to a Friend, Christian Morals, Urn-Burial, and other Papers. By SIR THOMAS BROWNE, KT., M. D. 16mo. Boston Ticknor & Fields. : 1862. pp. 432.

THIS old Elizabethan writer is one of the few who owe much of their power to what looks marvellously like a dash of insanity in their mental organization. He was an enthusiast of the most genuine water; dreamy, meditative, full of oddest conceits, delving alike in

antiquarian lore and careering boundlessly amid the fantasies of his magnificent imagination a genius which once in ages rises on the world to make us wonder if he belongs to a race which wears heads on its shoulders as we do. It is hard to class him, whether as humorist, philosopher, moralist, or mystic. Rather he is all these in one. Erudite in all common and strangest lore, ever on the track of some quaint allusion, some curious turn of thought, and coining the queerest of these fancies out of his own unique brain, he wearies you with his prolixity, recaptures you by his gorgeous style and endless versatility, puzzles you with his airiest of speculations, and makes you laugh at his whimsicality even when talking so gravely about poor human "dust and ashes." If we can believe his own account of himself, he was the most unconcerned of mortals about the facts and affairs of the actual world, rejoicing in one of his own conjuration, which he always seemed bent on draping with more baffling mysteries, and peopling with more inexplicable enigmas. He traverses this cloud-land of tenuous and vanishing idealism as if it were the pavement of a city, and only feels sure of himself when walking on the thinnest of abstractions. Withal he is a charming egotist, as garrulous as such a sui generis has a natural right, if not a constitutional necessity to be.

Writers like these can only be known in our day to the many through abbreviated editions of their works. This tasteful volume contains as much of Sir Thomas as most readers can enjoy. It is accompanied with judicious annotations, and is introduced by one of those beautiful manly heads of the olden time, which at once insures the author the respect, if not the admiration, of whoever turns his pages.

Spare Hours. By JOHN BROWN, M. D. 12mo. pp. 458. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1862.

THE Browns are not all dead to whom our English literature is: indebted for costly additions to its treasures; and several of the more brilliant of them have come, like this Edinburgh physician, from the medical profession. In this duodecimo, the American publishers have given us selected portions of the original "Horæ Subsecivæ," as they have also translated its title into the vernacular of their titlepage a very sensible change, as we think. The substance of the book consists of essays thrown off in a genial, discursive, racy style, showing a head through which the light shines like a window, and a

heart in the right place.

There is a strong element of out-door, vigorous life in this author. a breezy glow of enjoyment which makes one think of hale and hearty Christopher North, and then a touch of quiet, funny humor which comes as near to Charles Lamb's vein as any one ever will. He loves dogs, and knows them as if they were human people who had told him all their feelings, and made a clean breast to him of all their thoughts. We like these off-hand books, not meaning by this that they do not demand much careful authorship, but books which are given the world as "Recreations" (the word is growing rich) from life's hard labors, and which are written as much to refresh and relieve the maker of them as for any other purpose. Especially are we pleased that this rare efflorescence of graceful sentiment grows so naturally and beautifully over the good old foundations of the Scottish ancestral faith. Dr. Brown does not think it necessary to sharpen the edge of his wit upon the precious stones of the sanctuary. The pieces entitled "My Father's Memoir" and "Dr. Chalmers are especially redolent of the spirit of a piety which does not shrink to confess Christ before even literary and fashionable

men.

A Memorial of Closing Scenes in the Life of Rev. George B. Little. 8vo. pp. 171. Riverside Press, Cambridge. 1861.

THE way of Divine Providence with this recent and beloved pastor of one of our suburban churches beautifully illustrates the purifying of the Christian nature through the agency of affliction. A richly cultured mind, and a winning, genial spirit gave promise of no common usefulness in the ministry. But the few years of its prosecution were overcast with painful infirmity, settling steadily into hopeless disease and inevitable death. Under this foreshadowing of the end, our brother pursued his work, "cast down, but not destroyed." The end came soon-only thirty-nine years, and the silver cord was loosed. Not much is registered in these pages of his earlier life; but the very full and satisfactory details of the "closing scenes throw back a light upon those preparatory years, as they so brightly illumine the final struggle. His was such a dying as God only gives to his beloved, and not to all of those: a summer-sunset, like some which we have watched, in almost breathless admiration, under our own unrivalled heavens

"As sweet calm days, in golden haze,

Melt down the amber sky."

We adopt the words of a contemporary :—

"Such scenes are more

than argument; they are manifestation; they are an uplifting of the veil." The chastely graceful volume which contains their delineation is a better "Memorial" than sculptured marble. It is another "Hymn of Faith and Hope," the music of which is still echoing along the life

to come.

Reply to the New England Congregationalism of Hon. Daniel A. White. By JOSEPH B. FELT. pp. 57. Salem: Wm. Ives & Geo. W. Pease, Printers. 1861.

JUDGE WHITE made some severe strictures in his "Brief Sketch" on Dr. Felt's "Ecclesiastical History." To these Dr. Felt replied in 1856. A volume by Judge White renewed these strictures and added to them, and to these Dr. Felt replies in the pamphlet before us. Much of the pamphlet is devoted to a disproval of the assertion of Judge White that the First Church of Salem, at its formation, had no articles of faith separate from its covenant "to which subscription or assent was required in order to church-membership," and that this was the general usage of the churches in the Massachusetts colonies. We marvel that any one, presuming to write historically, should take such a position in view of the overwhelming array of facts that Dr. Felt marshals against it.

If the New England church fathers made anything preeminent it was a creed, as one of the essentials of a church. This Dr. Felt shows most abundantly, both of the Salem church of Mr. Higginson in particular, and of the other churches generally. His style has a quaint, puritan, matter-of-fact character, impressing us with the feeling that one of the fathers of two centuries ago is repelling the assertion of this modern, special-pleading, critic.

Great Expectations. By CHARLES DICKENS, Author of "Pickwick Papers," "Nicholas Nickleby," etc., etc. With Thirty-four Illustrations, from original designs by John McLenan. Complete in one volume. Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson & Brothers.

WE have read this book through, from beginning to end, and have scanned with care its thirty-four illustrations. If anybody else has done the same thing, he will admit that we have accomplished a feat. The fact requires explanation. The explanation is, we understood that the book was written by Charles Dickens, author of "Pickwick," "Oliver Twist," &c., and we had a mind to write an article on this last of his works. We shall not write the article.