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are somewhat of this judgment-it should be a book doing all that needs to be done, and thus be a book for the shelf and for reference, or it should be a manual, treating of the elements of the language. Books of the former class have been supplied by Gesenius, Stewart, Hurwitz, and Lee; and Mr. Burgh has here made a valuable addition to books of the latter description. The author's claim to the attention of the public rests on the care which he has taken to simplify the reading of the points, the use of the prefixes and suffixes, and the paradigms of the regular and irregular verbs. Mr. Burgh hopes that his book may be of use to those adult persons who, in the study of this language, "have been deterred by the difficulties they had to encounter, and the length of time hitherto required to be devoted to it:' and to this class, as well as to students who intend becoming thoroughly masters of the language, the book may be safely recommended.

XLIII. The Religions of the World, and their relation to Christianity, considered in Eight Lectures, founded by the Right Hon. Robert Boyle. By FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE, M.A., Chaplain of Lincoln's Inn, and Professor of Divinity in King's College, London. 8vo, pp. 257. Parker, London. 1847.

These are admirable discourses. It may be true, as intimated in the preface, that Mr. Maurice has not read all that might have been read on the extended subject embraced within his eight Lectures: but he has read enough, and has sufficiently digested what he has read, to have presented a clear and masterly view, within a small space, of the several large topics discussed. The Lectures are divided into two parts-the first embracing four lectures, on Mahometanism, Hindooism, Buddhism, and the defunct Religions; the second part exhibiting the relations of those different systems to Christianity. The book is precisely one of the sort contemplated by Boyle when founding the lecture so honourably associated with his name.

XLIV. The Footsteps of Messiah; a Review of Passages in the History of Jesus Christ. By the Rev. W. LEASK. 8vo, pp. 352. Snow, London.

1847.

In this volume, Mr. Leask has seized on a series of incidents, twenty-four in number, in the history of the Saviour, and has taken each incident as sug gestive of a topic for religious meditation. The conception of the work is good, and there is a combination of instructive thought and devout feeling pervading it with which we have been much gratified. We have not seen the same degree of clearness, point, and mastery in respect to style in any of Mr. Leask's previous publications.

Selected and trans With a Biographical Notice by the 24mo, pp. 211. Sutherland, Edin

XLV. Lyrical Poems by Pierre-Jean de Béranger.
lated by WILLIAM ANDERSON.
Translator, revised by the Poet.
burgh: Simpkin and Co., London.

1847.

He has been de

Béranger is now in the sixty-seventh year of his age. scribed as the 'Burns of France: and he is to France, as far as the two cases will admit of parallel, what Burns is to Scotland. His poems, as is well known, are chiefly ballads. In their form and idiom they are thoroughly French-and in their spirit they are intensely national. The felicitous freedom of their language, and their alternate fire and pathos, has secured them a place on the lips of artizan and peasant from one end of France to the other.

Translations of many of his pieces have appeared in our periodicals, but the volume of Mr. Anderson will do more than has hitherto been done to assist the English reader in forming some estimate of the genius of Béranger. The following stanzas are from those written in the garret six-stories high, in which the poet spent a portion of his youth:

"It was nought but a garret,-ay, read it who will,
My bed, low and hard, in that nook I recal;
There my table of fir, and above it see still,

The verses in charcoal inscribed on the wall!

Oh! appear once again, dear enjoyments; scarce fledged,
Ere stolen by fell Time from my comrades and me;
For you, I my watch have a score times pledged:
In a garret at twenty, how blest one can be!

'One day-rare event-a few ducats were mine;

I had friends round my table-we shouted and sung;

When cries from the street made us spring from our wine-
'Hurra! vive Napoleon, Marengo is won!'

Forth pealed the hoarse cannon-our voices replied,

As the hero's proud feats we applauded with glee;

'Who shall now dare invade our fair country,' we cried:
In a garret, at twenty, how blest one can be!'

XLVI. A Letter from Rome, showing an exact Conformity between Popery and Paganism. By CONYERS MIDDLETON, D.D.

London. 1847.

Grant and Griffith,

A cheap reprint of a Letter which has become memorable, and which should be in the hands of every Protestant. The reader desirous of pursuing the subject further should read Blunt's Vestiges of Ancient Manners in Italy.

XLVII. Bishop Jeremy Taylor, his Predecessors, Contemporaries, and Successors. A Biography. By the Rev. ROBERT ARIS WILLMOTT, Incumbent of Bear Wood, Berks. 12mo, pp. 307. Parker, London. 1847.

This is a comprehensive title, and affords Mr. Willmott ample sea-room. His aim has been, not so much to present a portrait, as a group, with Taylor as the principal figure. The design is good, and in realising it the author has given proof of extensive reading, cultivated taste, and devout feeling. Mr. Willmott's style is calm and simple; but there is a quiet vein of poetry running through his prose, which gives it no small charm.

XLVIII. Additional Remains of the Rev. Robert Murray M'Cheyne. 8vo, pp. 532. Johnstone, Edinburgh. 1847.

There is a kind of popularity sometimes obtained in the religious world, which we cannot rate very highly; and from the praise we have heard bestowed on the late Mr. M'Cheyne, we have been suspicious that in his case the admiration was more ardent than discriminating. But we must confess that these 'Additional Remains' are the only portion of his works we have read; and having read them, we are ready to confess farther, that we find in this volume evidence enough of the author's fervent piety and pulpit efficiency to account for his reputation, especially as we bear in mind the premature close of a life so full of promise. Mr. M'Cheyne's taste was to the last somewhat juvenile, but his spirituality, his general intelligence, and the skill and directness of his manner of teaching, were such as to give him a place much above the level of ordinary men.

XLIX. 1. Memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini, a Florentine Artist: written by himself.

2. The History of the Saracens. By SIMON OCKLEY, B.D.

3. The History of Painting in Italy. By ABATE Luigi Lanzi.
4. Coxe's House of Austria. Vols. I. and II.

These are volumes in Bohn's Standard Library. The Memoirs of Cellini present one of the most natural and veracious pieces of autobiography ever written. It supplies much information respecting the arts, and the general history of the sixteenth century. Walpole has described it as 'more amusing than any novel.' The present edition has been collated with the best Italian edition, and is enriched with notes by G. P. Carpani. Ockley's History of the Saracens is now nearly a century old; but its author was a man of talent, of thorough and honest research, and his reputation is still fresh with all students of Oriental history. Many notes from more recent authorities on Mohammedan history are added to this edition. The work of Lanzi is well known; it embraces the history of painting in Italy, from the revival of the fine arts to the end of the eighteenth century. Coxe's works are all well known and of standard value.

L. Thoughts on the Divine Permission of Moral Evil. By the Rev. T. M. READY, B.C.L. 8vo, pp. 32. 1845. Seeley.

This is a difficult theme. Mr. Ready has not brought anything new to the treatment of it.

LI. Orphanhood. Large quarto, pp. 92. Nisbet; Fisher; Ward; London.

1847.

This volume is published for the benefit of the ORPHAN WORKING SCHOOLan excellent charitable institution in the metropolis, instituted nearly a century since. The school has been conducted for many years past in the City-road; but its friends contemplate removing it to a more eligible building and locality, and hope to extend the charities of the institution to a larger number of the fatherless. The contributions to this volume are in prose and verse, from thirty-five distinguished divines or literary persons, and are accompanied with engravings and illustrations. It is a publication of much elegance and taste in its embellishments, and rich in the beautiful expression of sentiments that must be ever welcome to the benevolent heart.

LII. The Pictorial Bible. Parts 3-6. Royal 8vo. Knight, London.

This publication has already received our word of commendation. The successive parts will be found fully to realise the promise of the spirited publisher. Its multitude of illustrations throw a prompt and vivid light on the sacred text.

THE BRITISH

QUARTERLY REVIEW.

NOVEMBER 1, 1847.

ART. I. The Geology of Russia in Europe and the Ural Mountains. By RODERICK IMPEY MURCHISON, Pres. of R. Gr. S., V.P.R.S. and Geol. S., &c. &c.; EDOUARD DE VERNEUIL, V.P. Geol. Soc. France, &c.; and COUNT ALEXANDER VON KEYSERLING. 2 vols. 4to. London and Paris.

1845.

Of the three and a-third million square miles forming the continent of Europe, the vast empire of Russia occupies very nearly two millions, thus considerably more than all the other kingdoms united, and sixteen times the area of the British islands. From the Ural mountains in the east, it stretches to the Baltic in the west, and from the icy ocean on the north down to the shores of the Caspian and Euxine seas, and the declivities of the Carpathian mountains in the south. But neither the agricultural wealth nor picturesque beauty of the land are at all in proportion to its geographical extent. Whilst the arable ground in France and Britain covers four-fifths of the whole surface, in Russia it scarcely amounts to a sixth part; forty per cent. of the land being still overshadowed by primeval forests; and forty-four per cent. altogether unfitted for cultivation. But this non-agricultural character does not arise from the presence of those mountain regions, which in more southern realms often impede the labours of the husbandman, whilst they add beauty and variety to the land in which he dwells. Almost the whole of this immense tract, except a small part in the extreme north of Finland, belongs to the great north-European plain, which, beginning in the lower valley of the Rhine, oppo

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site our own shores, sweeps round the base of the Hartz and the Carpathians, into the valleys of the Danube, and to the coast of the Black Sea. On the north-west it is bounded by the Baltic, and that singular tract of lakes and morasses, like ancient chaos neither land nor water, but a confused mixture of both, which unites the gulf of Finland with the White Sea. On the east, so far as Europe is concerned, this plain is terminated by the narrow ridge of the Uralian mountains, but from their summit, the eye of the traveller* wanders over a still more immense Asiatic plain of similar character watered by the Obe, the Irtish, and the Lena, which, with its continuation in Europe, forms the shore of the Arctic ocean for more than 160 degrees of longitude.

This plain, though less immediately striking to the imagination than the Alps or Andes, is undoubtedly one of the most remarkable features in the physical history of the globe. Confining our views to the European portion alone, we find that from the chain of the Ural to the shores of the Baltic and North Sea, there is not a single connected mountain ridge, and scarce even an isolated hill, rising a thousand feet above the level of the ocean. Day after day the traveller gallops on over the interminable plains, broken only by the deep river ravines or the black pine forests, and at rare intervals by some mound of sand, thrown up into a hill by the winds at that remote epoch when the ocean yet spread its waters over the monotonous expanse. Even the very rivers that drain this region, betray, by their winding course, the uncertain nature of the declivities. The Volga, rising within two hundred miles of the Baltic, flows away to the Caspian, more than a thousand miles removed in a direct line, and twice that distance following the windings of the stream. Yet its sources are only 850 feet above the Baltic, and some eighty more above its mouth in the Caspian, to which its immense basin of 636,000 square miles-one fifth of the European continent-has thus a mean declivity of less than one foot in a mile. Notwithstanding the level surface of Russia, the difference of climate in a region extending from north to south, through more than twenty degrees of latitude, or from Nova Zembla as far south as France and Italy, produces considerable diversity of physical aspect. The most southern portions on the shores of the Caspian are barren, sandy, and saline plains, covered only by the most miserable vegetation, and partaking more of the character of northern Asia than of Europe. This is the abode of the Kirghis and Calmuck Tartars,

* See the very interesting 'Peep into Siberia,' Plate vi. in vol. i. p. 425 of the work before us.

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