notices what passes among foreigners, - what they think, feel, suffer, or do, but with relation to the use which England can make of their actions, their sufferings, their feelings, and their thoughts; and that, when she seems most to care for them, she really only cares for herself." (p. 393.) "In the eyes of an Englishman, a cause is just if it be the interest of England that it should succeed. A man or a government that is useful to England has every kind of merit, and one that does England harm, every kind of fault." A judgment it would be hardly fair to quote, except from so sincere and intelligent an admirer.

Many of the particular remarks and observations in these volumes are well worth keeping by themselves. The judgment of the Swiss republic expresses the very thought which for the last year has guided the counsels of our best public men, that it is a "league, and not a federation, without exception the most impotent, weak, awkward, and incapable machine to lead a nation to anything but anarchy." (Vol. II. p. 36.) An interesting comment on schemes of public finance is found in the statement, that the prosperity of the lower classes in France grew in great part out of the issue of assignats, which have become almost a symonyme of national bankruptcy and commercial ruin. The testimony of this correspondence is clear and curious, as to the improvement in condition, along with the decrease of numbers, among the body of the French population (Vol. II. p. 351), and the tendency of the imperial government to oppress the rich in favor of the poor. (p. 336.) A very valuable piece of historical testimony is found in De Tocqueville's narrative, given in familiar letters, of the great crime of the 2d of December, known as the coup d'état. As one of the sufferers by this act, he was not only deeply alienated from the government of Louis Napoleon, but became anxious, desponding, and prophetic of evil for France. His account of his own connection with the siege of Rome in 1849, and the spirit of the instructions given to Oudinot, throws an important side-light on that remarkable act of state necessity. It was "not want, but ideas," according to him, that brought about the revolution of 1848; and among the most curious of his expositions of the earlier revolution is that in which he traces the growth in the privileged classes of those opinions which proved so swiftly fatal.

De Tocqueville notices with regret the dropping out of public virtues, in France, from the received code of Christian morals (Vol. II. p. 317), and contrasts the present time with that just within his own recollection, when patriotism and loyalty were taught along with the child's first lessons of religion. Many of his remarks on this subject are earnest and instructive. He is struck mournfully by the decline in many of the higher virtues, along with the gain in many material comforts, since the elder monarchy; and by the contrast he finds in England and in America, where "political freedom rather increases than diminishes religious feeling." He contrasts also the violence of public speech in England with moderation of action; and says that half of what is said there at a dinner or on the hustings, without mischief, would in France imply a revolution. France he sees steadily drifting towards democracy,-a consummation which he regards with more of dread than

hope; and he is anxious to impress on his countrymen, as one lesson of his American experience, the felt need of universal education, and "the habit of submitting willingly to law, which, in my opinion, is the only counterpoise to democracy." (Vol. I. p. 297.)

We hope to see this interesting memoir of a real discoverer and a true man in print among our adopted literature, with its admirable maps and beautiful illustrations.* A man who, in his sixty-fifth year, will volunteer a voyage to Australia to test his theory of the deflection of the compass upon iron ships, deserves to be known and honored by our enterprising countrymen. But besides his many scientific discoveries regarding snow, the Arctic regions, magnetism, the Atlantic waves, deep-sea soundings, and ocean currents, which won for Dr. Scoresby the diplomas of twenty-five distinguished societies, the brave mariner went through a religious change which consecrated his later manhood to the service of the Church as well as the service of humanity. His mind shared perfectly the intense activity of his body. Even after advancing years had enfeebled his frame, and disease threatened his life, he could not intermit the exhausting labor of his pen or his voice. As we find that the effort of preparing his last voyage for the press really precipitated his death, it is impossible to forget his likeness to Dr. Kane, whose fame was earned in the same seas where Scoresby first distinguished himself, and was secured by those remarkable volumes of narrative into which his ebbing life was in like manner poured.

The spiritual experience and ministerial career of this really heroic man of science will, we doubt not, endear his name to many who had known no more of William Scoresby than as a successful Arctic navigator, an entertaining lecturer on science, a persevering investigator of nature, and a disinterested promoter of science in every form.

WE will answer for it that the Rev. T. Goodwin belongs to that side of the Church of England which calls the communion-table altar, and likes to put candles on it, and is learned in pix and pax, chasuble and dalmatic, lectern and rood, and all the ecclesiologies. If he is not, his copy of the manner thereof is something wonderful. He seems to be a man of sensitive make and pure taste, but prudishly fastidious in art-matters, verging toward the priggish and intolerant. His theologizing, where it peeps out by the way, and especially in the note upon the representation of angels in art, is an amazing exposition of solemn trifling. It could come only out of the depths of the "ages of faith” and of darkness, now happily somewhat passed; or from the bosom of a Church which is at this moment copying the folly and sin of those times, in arraigning free and reverent inquiry before ecclesiastical courts of inquisition, and in fleecing Greek learning of its just wage for lectures upon Eschylus's Tragedies, on suspicion of its heretical dealing with the Epistles of St. Paul.

* Life of William Scoresby, D. D., F. R. S. L. & E. By his Nephew, R. E. SCORESBY JACKSON. London: Nelson and Sons. 1861.

Happily for this Life of Fra Angelico,* there is not much chance in it for theologizing; else it would be as absurd a little book as was ever printed. It appears to give faithfully the sparse facts, which can be gathered here and there, about this holy artist-monk, and weaves in with the biography, or appends to it, notices and catalogues of his works, and of engravings from them, which cannot but be valuable for reference. It must be said, that, in point of style, the frequent quotations are so much better than the compiler's own writing, that one almost regrets the absence of quotation-marks throughout. It must, however, be said too, that the enthusiasm shown for the subject is not more surely merited and well applied, than it is obviously genuine, unaffected, and founded on knowledge and comprehension of the high and peculiar excellence of this most pious and blessed painter, both in his works and in his spirit and life. Saving the drawback incident to reading whatever has any tang of cloister-like squeamishness and overscrupulosity or monkish intolerance about it, we have taken pleasure in this book, and been instructed by it. We commend it to those lovers of religious art who would find out, in brief and at once, all that is scattered through many books regarding the man who stands easily the chief in his peculiar line of development of that art, and among the first of all who have honored and ennobled it in their works.

GEOGRAPHY AND TRAVELS.

"

AN uneducated colonist has furnished a well-written, circumstantial account of everything worth knowing about the "Britain of the South," and though Mr. Hursthouse's "unvarnished tale" may prove no temptation to Americans, we doubt not he will attract hundreds of British emigrants to a country nearly as large as Great Britain, but almost unoccupied and unexplored, a country favored with the finest climate, and adorned with the most exuberant vegetation. No other region promises so much on the score of health. Tried upon an English regiment of regular troops, it is found that sixty are annually threatened with consumption in New Zealand, twice that number in Malta, and one hundred and forty-eight in Canada or England; while the proportion of actual mortality is still more favorable to New Zealand, two and seven tenths making the annual average of deaths by consumption in an English regiment there, against six at Malta, six and seven tenths in Canada, and eight deaths during the same time among the same number of soldiers in England. And with regard to general mortality, the contrast between New Zealand and Malta is quite as remarkable.

The fine race of natives seem, however, to be dying out, are found to have small families, and to be remarkably unsuccessful in raising children, owing probably to the immoral habits of the women. These aborigines have been great favorites with the missionaries, because of

The Life of Fra Angelico da Fiesole. By the REV. T. GOODWIN. London: Rivingtons. 1861. Second Edition. London:

† New Zealand. By CHARLES HURSTHOUSE. Stanford. 1861.

VOL. LXXII. 5TH S. VOL. X. NO. II.

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their readiness to be converted, and their zeal for religious ordinances; but Mr. Hursthouse tells some damaging stories about the ferocity of these new converts, who think themselves better fighters than any foreigners, and have hardly forgotten their relish for human flesh.

By nature these two grand islands seem destined to be the stockfarm, granary, dairy, brewery, and orchard of the South Pacific; yet, deeply robed in perpetual green as they are, they possess very little of their own, not so much as a native rat or any indigenous mammalia, but offer abundant facilities for the growth of every vegetable or animal belonging to the temperate zone. With only eighty thousand settlers, the annual trade amounts already to fifteen millions of dollars. The principal export, wool, is found to double its amount every four years; Captain Cook's turnips and potatoes still flourish to do honor to his memory; and wild pigs, introduced by some benevolent voyager, serve as a substitute for all kinds of game. It is rather a striking thought, that of these great islands-possessing so many advantages, such freedom from drought and desert, from snakes and wolves, from pestilence and malaria-waiting till our time for the coming of man to tenant their vast solitudes with any higher life than that of the vegetable world. But so it is. 66 Fifty different species of columnar trees struggle through a wilderness of underwood to the height of two hundred feet," our author says, "having their leafy heads loaded with tufts of rusky parasites.” Mines of coal have been found, almost without looking for them, and abundant traces of the most valuable minerals.

GEORGE TURNER, in his minute, unadorned, and seemingly truthful narrative of nearly twenty years' labor in the Samoan Islands,* deserves to be honored as a Christian hero. Sent out by the London Missionary Society, immediately after the massacre of Rev. John Williams and James Harris at Eromanga, he commences his mission at the island of Tauna, is assailed by a large heathen party because the white men were reputed to bring disease, refuses to defend himself by fire-arms, or allow himself to be so defended, is delivered from impending death by the providential arrival of a merchant-vessel, and, nothing disheartened, takes a bishop-like charge of the twelve islands occupied by the English Society, until the necessity of superintending the printing of a Samoan Bible induces his temporary return to his native land. The result of the united effort thus far is, that, among the very islanders which murdered Captain Cook, among universal cannibals, polygamists, idolaters of the lowest stamp, and perpetual fighters, — there are now twenty thousand professed Christians, more than six hundred church-members, and as many more candidates for admission. The missionary force is composed of the European missionaries, with three printing-presses, and two hundred and thirty-one native teachers.

The chief opposition to the Gospel seems to be revenge for the cruelties practised by the sandal-wood traders, who drag away the natives

* Nineteen Years in Polynesia. By REV. GEORGE TURNER. London: J. Snow. 1861,

into slavery, outrage their women, plunder their chiefs, destroy their plantations, and are nicknamed in the native dialect "sailing profligates." Mr. Turner gives accounts of recent outrages committed by these mercantile freebooters, which have been punished with remorseless severity by the heathen natives. Three hundred and twenty-two seamen have been put to death by the outraged islanders, and most of them eaten with general exultation. And yet, taking Mr. Turner's homely statements for the literal truth, no people on the face of the earth could be more easily Christianized, and so brought gradually within the circle of a mutually profitable commerce. Curious evidences are given of the early traditions of the Bible having been adopted by this simple race; and hundreds of illustrations of Hebrew customs are furnished by their present practices, some of which are really remarkable. Mr. Turner has appended a Meteorological Register for seven years at Samoa, and a Comparative View of the Polynesian Dialects, showing that one serious difficulty in bringing these natives over to a unity of faith will be the diversity of tongues. Still, the effort so energetically and courageously made seems to be rewarded with abundant fruit of the right kind.

HER Britannic Majesty's Consul, with his superior opportunities, has added little to our knowledge of "Great Japan,"* besides a catalogue of plants by Sir Edward Hooker, and some experiences confirmatory of the better reports by such writers as Bishop Smith, whose "Ten Weeks" were noticed in our November number. His view of the armed aristocracy which really rules this ancient land is somewhat appalling, and rather hard to believe. These nobles number two hundred and sixty, some of them having an income of a million sterling; twenty dukes he computes could muster 150,000 warriors; twenty marquises, 100,000; one hundred earls, 250,000; one hundred and twenty barons, 120,000; an immense army, far outnumbering the Emperor's;-they are, besides, the only landed proprietors, and the. principal merchants, though disdaining that name. Instead of being hostile to foreign commerce as the Bishop asserts, the Consul, with his better means of knowing, concludes that the interests of these mighty princes are becoming so involved in the newly opened trade, that "all the wiles, menaces, and force of the Tycoon will be powerless to check the innate desire of every human being to accumulate wealth, and by wealth power and place." Still, Mr. Hodgson shows that the Japanese generally regret their concession of trade to the Americans in 1854, and that they have really gained nothing beyond some trifling presents; that they have bought a few bales of Manchester goods, a few toys, and some flannels; but that they have been wounded in their pride, their sensibility, their institutions, their habits, their hopes, and their desires. Only four months after the opening of their port to foreigners, a demand was forced upon the Japan treasury for itzabous in exchange for

A Residence at Nagasaki and Hakodate in 1859-60. By C. PEMBERTON HODGSON. London: Bentley. 1861.