down among the camels and the orange-groves of the Crimea. There he might unpack from their native ice the salmon and the capercailzie which he had yesterday secured as presents for his friends; and after a supper of grapes and pomegranates, might go to sleep at the open lattice, or in the coolest apartment he could find.

Or, conversely, were a Circassian falling under the displeasure of the Czar, and spirited off to that great limbo where all the patriotic are lost and forgotten, in the outset of his journey he would pass through jungles where the wild ox, the lynx, and the tiger-cat still range, and where serpents lurk amongst the rankness of a vegetation almost tropical. By-and-bye he would come out on those mighty steppes, whose monotony is here and there broken by a flock of fat-tailed sheep, or a troop of wild horses, or at least a flight of fishing pelicans, and where the wine of the Caucasus is replaced by the sour mare's milk of the Tartar tent. Steering still northward, perhaps he would cross the Ural at Ekatarinburg, and admire the superb masses of malachite there dug from the mountain; and threading his way through awful forests, the haunt of the bear, the wild boar, and the eagle, at last he emerges on Tobolsk. But most likely he is not allowed to linger among the favoured exiles who in summer look out on its green meadows and birch-groves; but, "onward, still onward," towards some Siberian fort or mine he flies in his fated sledge, till he has bid a final farewell to everything warm and beautiful.

"Cold! cold! there is no sun in heaven,

A heavy and uniform cloud

Overspreads the face of the sky,

And the snows are beginning to fall.

All waste! no sign of life

But the track of the wolf and the bear;

No sound but the wild, wild wind,

And the snow crunching under his feet."

Or, setting out from his palace at Petersburg, and keeping on the same parallel of latitude, the emperor himself might post in an unbroken line for nearly six thousand miles on his own dominions, and after crossing Behring's Straits, might resume his route, and for many hundred miles still find himself on Russian territory.

His enormous size gives the Russian strange neighbours. With Austria in front, and the north pole in the rear, his bulky shadow falls as far as Italy, and may well make the Lake of Como shiver. On the one side the land of Gustavus and Charles XII. gives him the cold shoulder; whilst on the other side he consoles his unaccustomed palate with the honey of the Chersonesus and the sherbet of Persia. One foot rests on the birth-land of Kant, and the other on the home of Confucius; and so long is his arm that the letter handed to him by the British settler in Canada he might almost undertake to convey direct to his brother in Calcutta. In other words, betwixt British America and British India hardly anything intervenes which is not Russian.

According to M'Culloch, in 1846, the area of the Russian empire contained 7,293,850 English square miles. But England and Scotland united have an area of only 88,050 square miles; France, including Corsica, 203,736 square miles; and the whole of Europe, 3,650,000. Therefore Russia has a superficial extent ninety times greater than Great Britain; thirty-six times greater than France; and exactly the double of all Europe united.

REVIEW OF THE MONTH.

PARLIAMENT opened on the 31st of January; and should Ministers succeed in carrying their proposed improvements, a prodigious accession will be made to the worth and wellbeing of our favoured nation. To say nothing of the cost which will be saved by transferring cases of disputed wills from the ecclesiastical to the civil tribunals, and the impulse which is likely to be given to industry by altering the Law of Settlement, the contemplated changes in the civil service, and the provisions of the new Reform-bill, hold out a noble premium to intelligence and good citizenship. The graduate of any British university, or the man who has had fifty pounds in the savings' bank for three years, is now to be created an elector; and instead of appointments in the Customs and other Government offices being awarded to parliamentary patronage, they will be bestowed on the most qualified candidates. It is also to be hoped that the session will not close without something being done for the better education of our people.

To these and similar measures of internal reform, there is added a feature of moral grandeur in the circumstance that they are introduced at the moment when this country is sending forth nearly a hundred ships-of-war to repel barbaric aggression and to maintain the balance of power in Europe.

A discovery, which may prove of great importance in the arts, has been made by M. Sainte-Claire Deville, of Paris. He has found a method by which it is hoped that aluminium, the metallic base of alum and all the argillaceous earths, may be obtained in large quantities. Alumi

nium is a metal of silvery splendour, and it retains its brightness in air and water. It is exceedingly ductile, and is one of the lightest of metals, having a specific gravity of only 2.56. As it is not acted on by sulphuretted hydrogen, it will make excellent egg-spoons, and it will remain untarnished in our gas-lit apartments. Should the process of reduction be cheap, there need be no end to the supply: seeing there is an ample mine in every brick wall and kitchen-garden.

On the 27th of January died at Durham, the venerable Master of Sherburn Hospital, the Rev. George Stanley Faber. He had reached his eightieth year. His "Difficulties of Infidelity," and of "Romanism," have been his most popular publications; but his "Mysteries of the Cabiri," his "Origin of Pagan Idolatry," and his "Calendar of Prophecy," are all works of vast erudition and enduring value.

The Lectures to the Young Men's Christian Association are concluded; and on the whole they have been the best course ever given. Mr. Hugh Miller's "Two Records: the Mosaic and the Geological," was not only an original, and, as we think, a successful reconciliation, but it was a charming sketch of the geological domain and its great successive dynasties. Dr. C. J. Vaughan's "Cicero" we have just perused, with much admiration of its noble sentiments, and with longing that we could breathe more frequently that classical atmosphere, whose exquisite afflatus is wafted to our spirits in this truly Tusculan discourse. Dr. Candlish closed the series with a review of the theological system propounded by Mr. Maurice, and we are happy to hear that it is his intention to publish a detailed examination of Mr. Maurice's " Essays."

Thanks to the zeal of its publisher, we perceive that a new book of Travels in Syria has reached a second edition.

NEW PERIODICALS.

TABLE-TURNING.

223

But we question if in his jaunty pages many readers will discover M. de Sauley's "Discovery of the Site of Sodom and Gomorrah." They will be of service, however, if they lead some careful and sagacious man, like Robinson, to a more accurate exploration of the Dead Sea border.

Dr. Joseph Hooker has published, in two profusely illustrated volumes, "Notes of a Naturalist," being his Travels among the Himalayas and Khasia Mountains. We have not had time to read them yet; but from the high standing of the author and from the rich accessions to science which rewarded both his Antarctic and Indian researches, we expect a great treat in their perusal.

We are already old enough to be entitled to introduce some younger contemporaries. Of these "The News of the Churches" will be to some of our readers the most welcome. Its object is to supply a monthly abstract of the missionary intelligence and the internal occurrences of the British and Continental Churches, giving the essence of all the denominational newspapers and magazines, and supplementing these from the information of private correspondents. It has made a good beginning. "The Christian Annotator" is the plan of the admirable "Notes and Queries" transferred to theological literature; and it promises to furnish a muchdesired medium of intercommunication to students of Church History, Biblical Criticism, and kindred subjects. In the numbers which have already appeared, several interesting points have received a valuable elucidation. "The Museum of Science and Art" is a most successful attempt to bring within every one's reach the wonders of Natural Philosophy.

Judging by the sermons and pamphlets which come in our way, the table-turning mania is not yet extinct. On the principle of the Scottish proverb, "timber to timber," we can understand how, when certain people and certain tables lay their heads together, there should be a powerful sym