terest with which it is written. The purity and force of the style, the ease of the narrative, the skillful selection of the incidents, the force and spirit of the representations, all combine together to make this one of the most fascinating of modern histories. The period itself is one of the most important of the many interesting periods in the story of England's greatness, for it begins just at that point in the reign of Henry VIII., when England began to break with the Pope, and it includes the whole of "the great Eliza's golden time." The first chapter is a minute but finely conceived representation of the "Social condition of England in the sixteenth century," and the eleventh, the last of the second volume, is occupied with the trial and execution of Anne Boleyn.

The reader is almost startled to find that both these volumes are consistent in the elaborate attempt to vindicate Henry VIII. from the reproach which has rested upon him on the part of both Protestants and Catholics. He will be stimulated by the skill and power with which this defense is conducted, to expect the continuation of the story, and will anticipate with a curiosity still more eager the volumes which narrate the ever interesting times of Elizabeth.

We have reason to thank Mr. Scribner for republishing so interesting a contribution to English History, and for the very handsome style in paper, type, and binding, in which it is presented to the reader.

When the series is complete, we may give our readers a more careful analysis of its contents and criticisms upon its opinions. But we can safely pronounce the work one of the most interesting of modern histories.

SCUDDER'S LIFE AND LETTERS.*. -A little more than two years ago, an universal interest was awakened by the accounts which were published of the sudden death, by drowning, in India, of a young American missionary-David Coit Scudder. He was attempting to cross, by swimming, a river that had been much swollen by the rains. He had just about reached the very middle, when a reservoir above gave way, and an immense wave came down upon him, sufficient to overwhelm even so powerful and

Life and Letters of David Coit Scudder, missionary in Southern India. By HORACE E. SCUDDER. New York: Hurd & Houghton. 1864. 12mo. pp. 402. New Haven: Judd & White. Price $2.

practised a swimmer as he was known to be. We have now this memoir of his life, prepared by his brother. It is a book which will immediately attract the attention of all who are interested in missionary operations in India, for the fullness, freshness, and minuteness of its descriptions of all that is peculiar in the life of

a missionary in that country. The volume is made up to a great extent of the letters of Mr. Scudder, which are just such letters as the reader would wish to receive from a member of his own family, who was similarly situated. He describes the house in which he lives, every part of it; his domestics; his home life for a day; the peculiarities and troubles of housekeeping in India, and how he has to send his horse thirty-six miles to be shod; his church; its individual members; the character of his work among them; a children's party which he gives, where he entertains them with a stereoscope and teaches them to play blind man's buff; the way in which he travels on his missionary tours; and his adventures and conversations with the people he meets. To all who are going as missionaries to India for years to come, this memoir will be invaluable for these pictures of every day life.

But the book has another value. It is a memorial of a young man whose career at college and at the theological seminary, though perfectly unostentatious, may be studied with profit. We have not space to follow it. It must suffice to say, that when the news of his death reached Andover, the senior professor said in his lecture room to his class, "You could trace his course through this seminary as a river through a meadow, by the greenness of its banks. If he had died immediately upon leaving us, he would have done a life's work." We can only add that we consider it a very fortunate circumstance that so competent a biographer was at hand to prepare this memoir of one whose beautiful character and example, deserve long to be remembered.

GEOGRAPHICAL.

RITTER'S COMPARATIVE GEOGRAPHY.*-Shortly after Ritter's death, three of his courses of lectures were given to the public in Germany, and one of these is now translated by Mr. Gage. The volume furnishes within a brief compass a good view of the

*Comparative Geography. By CARL RITTER. Translated by WM. L. GAGE. Philadelphia: 1865. 12mo. New Haven: Judd & White. Price $1.50.

principles and methods which guided the investigations of Ritter, and have influenced the work of that school of physical geographers which he trained up. Confining himself to the solid earth, the author inquires into all the forms of mountains, plateaus, lowlands, and depressions which diversify the world, often entering into detailed descriptions of interesting regions and comparing their principal features with those of other countries. As the seas, the climate, the animal life, the vegetation, and the races of men are not discussed in the present work, it can hardly be called a complete introduction to the science of physical geography; but on the topic to which it is devoted, the land-forms of the globe, there is no better manual. It affords an excellent notion of the lectures which were so attractive to Ritter's pupils. The treatise is divided into three parts. After a brief introduction, in which the true character of geographical science is set forth, the surface of the earth is considered in its most general relations. The spheroidal form of the globe, the contrast of the lard and water hemispheres, the shape, size and situations of the continents, and the historical element in geographical science, are the topics successively taken up. This portion of the work is followed by a more minute investigation of the elevations and depressions of the earth's surface. Under successive heads, every form of the land structure is discussed. Comparisons are instituted between the different similar regions, and generalizations of a striking and original character are frequently made. In the third or concluding section, the superficial dimensions and articulation of the continents, and the form and position of islands are considered. Throughout the entire work, there is less of sharp and precise statement than most students will wish for,-but it must be borne in mind that the volume consists of lectures intended to awaken thought and stimulate enthusiasm, and that it cannot be judged as a rigidly scientific treatise. Moreover it is printed without any sanction or revision of the author.

Mr. Gage, the translator, shows increased facility in the work to which he is devoting himself, and the version which he promises of Ritter's Views of Palestine may be anticipated with interest by those who are not familiar with the original.

MISCELLANEOUS.

ESSAYS IN CRITICISM.*-Matthew Arnold, a son of the greatly honored, or we might better say the tenderly reverenced Thomas Arnold, of Rugby, has been known, at least to a few American readers, as one of the ablest critics now living in England. We by no means affirm that his critical judgments are always to be trusted. On the contrary, they often seem to be one-sided, or at least over-strained. Sometimes they are capricious and extravagant almost to the extreme of perverseness. But they have this grand superiority, that they are removed above and beyond the interest of any party in religion, politics, or literature, and seek to be founded on truth in respect to both matter and form. They aim to be theoretically just and true. It may be that the theory of the author is not always sound, but it is a theory to which he is usually faithful. It will be found also that his ideals are never mean, but always noble; that he moves in a sphere which is above the petty passions of any present controversy, and wider than that prescribed by the limited prejudices of a single nation, or the blinding fashions of any transient period. He is in a good sense cosmopolitan, generous, and therefore candid and reverential-or at least he aims to be.

What is very remarkable for an Englishman, and for a professor in and a devotee of Oxford, he urges the claims of French education, of French literature, and of the French Academies, as counter to some of the most inveterate English prejudices, and the most fixed of English peculiarities.

But he is not the less bold and even trenchant in exposing the faults of favorite writers, because he is so grandly catholic; nor is he the less skillful in illustrating his principles by concrete examples from individual writers, both living and dead. Whatever may be his occasional bizarrerie of opinion, his influence upon the current thought and writing of England cannot but be most salutary, and we welcome this republication of his critical essays to a similar healthful influence in our own country, which of all things stands most in need of intelligent, bold, and well-considered criticism in literature.

Essays in Criticism. University of Oxford.

By MATTHEW ARNOLD, Professor of Poetry in the Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1865. 12mo. pp. 506.

New Haven: T. H. Pease. Price $1.75.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON'S POEMS AND ESSAYS.*-Mr. Emerson has succeeded in forming a school of thinkers and writers which, however few in numbers or short-lived in duration, possesses certain marked characteristics of its own. Mr. Emerson may himself be said to have been originally an offshoot from Carlyle, or, with more truth, to have been an original seedling that sprung up in the shade of that strange exotic in English literature. The force of Mr. Emerson's character, the audacity of his half-suggested and half-uttered opinions, the coolness and dryness of his shrewd observations, the exhaustless wealth of his illustrations, the poetic mysticism with which he adorns and conceals doctrines at once the most hideous and repulsive, the clear and laconic ring of his elaborate and yet apparently simple style, all combine to invest his writings with a singular fascination, and to secure for his lectures and essays a large circle of admiring and bewildered readers.

We cannot think that Mr. Emerson was either born or has yet been made a Poet. His Prose is far better Poetry than are his socalled Poems. When he writes verse, he seems to us to be obeying to the letter his own directions. "Doubt not, O poet, but persist. Say, 'It is in me, and shall out.' Stand there, balked and dumb, stuttering and stammering, hissed and hooted, stand and strive, until, at last, rage draw out of thee that dreampower which every night shows thee is thine own." Rage has not yet got possession of Mr. Emerson, at least not so far as to draw out in many harmonious lines the dream-power which unquestionably visits him not only every night but every day.

We would that "Rage" might seize him for one good day, or what were even better, that earnestness might lead him to forget the strangely artificial and factitious manhood that he has wrought for himself and seeks to express in his writings, vainly struggling the while to believe that he is obeying the impulses and the inspiration of Nature. Could he be but transported by the fire of intense and overmastering feeling, so as to forget the rôle which he deems it his duty to play, he might become not only a Poet, but Philosopher, Theologian, and even a Christian and a Calvinist!

Poems. By R. W. EMERSON. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. New Haven: T. H. Pease. Price $1.50.

Essays. By R. W. EMERSON. First and Second Series. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. New Haven: T. H. Pease. Price $1.50.