too complete, too massive, and too strictly conscientious and particular for that, too encyclopedic, systematic, and compacted. It should be received for what it professes to be, a manual for systematic instruction and reference, a thoroughly elaborated text-book. As such, it is worthy to take its place along with the "System of Mineralogy," upon which the author first established his fame at home and abroad. As far as possible, the Manual of Geology "has been adapted to two classes of students, the literary and the scientific, by printing the details in finer type," by a well-digested synopsis, and by gathering into "general observations," at the close of each period, a summary of the leading facts and the more important deductions; so that, while for the American geological student this work is all-essential, the general inquirer who takes it up in the spirit of a student, and turns to its pages again and again, will be amply rewarded.

A full treatise, like this, was first and most wanted, and the desideratum is now supplied by the most competent hand. Improvements and minor changes will of course be suggested from year to year, indeed, from month to month. Next to the labor and care of constructing such an edifice is the charge of keeping it in good repair. We cannot expect, and could not wish, to see this work shorter in future editions. Yet, for the majority of classes, and as a text-book for elementary instruction, it is superabundant. We bespeak from the same masterly hand a syllabus, or a strictly elementary Introduction to Geology for classes, on the plan of the present work.

ART. V.-1. The Patience of Hope. By the Author of "A Present Heaven." With an Introduction by JOHN G. WHITTIER. Boston Ticknor and Fields. 1863.

2. A Present Heaven. Addressed to a Friend. By the Au-. thor of "The Patience of Hope." Boston: Ticknor and Fields. 1863.

3.

Two Friends.

By the Author of "The Patience of Hope," and "A Present Heaven." Boston: Ticknor and Fields. 1863.

THOSE who have been close students of outward nature, the naturalists, the hunters, the poets, the astronomers, the

"Lone readers of the woods, the waters, and the skies,"

have been amply repaid for their labors by the intimate knowledge they have gained of all things in that outer world. Their writings are fresh with discoveries, suggestions, inferences; they speak of what they alone know; and they command attention. To this cause, Cooper, and Christopher North, and Thoreau, owe much of their popularity; to this, Wordsworth is indebted for his position as the father of modern poetry; by this, Humboldt and Agassiz hold their rank as naturalists. It is very true that, if we wish to win a secret, we must make an effort, and no more true in outward nature than in the hidden life of every man. They who listen to the beating of their own hearts, who question actions and thoughts, who sound the depths of their inward being, gain a knowledge which throws upon many a dark problem in human nature the light of spiritual truth. If this introspective study does not degenerate into sentimental feeling, but is carried on by sound healthy thought, it brings to knowledge new facts; it reveals in our minds to a great extent the working of other minds; one person becomes the microcosm of humanity. Hence the value of these meditations; they are not to be set aside as idle dreams, but esteemed as contributions to the yet unwritten philosophy of human life. Works of this class have, indeed, been always highly prized, yet rather by a sect than by the world at large. They are generally personal revelations, the confessions of some lone spirit who, in default of friends, has begged the great world

to listen. But they often cut the knot of questions which have been asked for centuries, simply because they disclose some new fact or some fresh application of a known truth. They are the writings which descend by degrees into the common currency of thought, and give it depth and life.

To this class of books we are glad to add the volumes named at the head of this article, "Two Friends," "The Patience of Hope," and "A Present Heaven." They were written by Miss Dora Greenwell, a native of England, and a communicant of the English Church. She has also published a volume of poetry which has not yet been reprinted here, but which, if we may judge from the extracts we have seen, differs from her prose writings only by the accident of verse. She writes with a certain masculine freedom of expression, in a style at once strong, clear, and poetic, without much logical sequence, but yet with a firm, nervous grasp of thought. She so states her views that they seem to be intuitively true; they do not need argument; they require meditation; they appeal to your thoughtful experience; they demand the still hour, the quiet, trustful heart, the sympathy of a warm religious faith; and when read in this spirit, they unfold an unusual richness of thought and experience. She is familiar with the best things in literature, has a highly cultivated mind, and yet she does not travel at all in hackneyed paths. She has marked out an original course of thought. Her writings have a strong, yet genial personality. They are distinct from whatever has been heretofore written upon these topics. Hence their value is the greater, as the unmistakable testimony of an original mind. We should think the writer had been much alone, working out, like "Currer Bell," the problems which beset her own life in silence and in familiar study of the Book of books. It would be difficult to find in all the current writings of women any work which can compare with these little volumes in respect of subtile, fine, spiritual thought. Such books are always the fruit of a meditative life. They grow, like plants, by inward forces unseen by the eye, unheard by the ear.

What, then, is their subject? It is no easy question to answer. They are all meditations upon the solemn, spiritual realities of life. They deal familiarly with topics which are

seldom spoken of even among intimate friends, but which are ever haunting our thoughtful hours. The religious life is the grand theme; and the treatment is easy and episodical, like conversation. He who looks into them for the commonplaces of religious writing will find nothing to his taste. They are not mawkish, nor sentimental, but strong and deep and quiet. They breathe freely the thoughts and feelings of one to whom spiritual things are real and familiar. The Christian life, the daily teaching of personal experience, the power and weakness of Christianity, its special application to our own time, the peculiar work of the Holy Spirit, are all treated with fulness, point, and originality.

We turn now to the special examination of the books themselves. The "Two Friends" is made up apparently from the conversations of two friends upon a variety of religious topics. This is a popular yet ancient way of bringing together disjointed fragments of thought. It allows the freedom of saying what you please; it removes the stiffness of professed bookmaking. The friends are the author and Philip, who appears as the rector of an English parish church. The book is prefaced by a curious and needlessly involved allegory of human life. The writer wanders by a stream which flows out into the great ocean. The stream is the world, growing more confused and unsteady, as we embark more entirely upon it; but followed up to its source, a babbling brook, a rivulet, a spring, it is seen to come from God alone. The writer is guided in her allegory by the teachings of an ancient book; and in the mountains whence the stream issues she meets Him of whom the ancient book speaks. He unfolds to her the secrets and the meaning of life. The teaching of the allegory seems to consist of the experiences of one who wanders away from God, and yet turns back to him as the only safe guide into all truth. It thus embraces the whole cycle of experience through which any one mind may pass.

Philip enters upon the scene at the close of the allegory. Peace had come to the writer's heart. She had passed over the threshold of a new existence. She says of this change:

There are some days, even moments, in our lives, upon which the

burden of the whole seems laid, which, as in a parable, condense within them the mystery, the contradiction of our existence, and perhaps hint at its solution. After such times, life grows clearer before and after. These seasons are set apart from the rest by a solemn consecration. We feel that we are anointed above our fellows'; it may be for the joy of the bridal, for the wrestler's struggle, or against the day of our burial, we know not which." pp. 25, 26.

Each had freely used the ancient book; each had that diverse experience which drew each to the other; and when they met, "the dying light, the faint shiver of the leaves above us, the mystery, the solitude that enclosed us, all seemed to exalt, to deepen our converse, to shorten our way into each other's hearts, by removing all that ofttimes drops like a veil between soul and soul, changing us from our truer, better selves in an evil transfiguration." The passages which describe the effect of the interview upon the writer's mind are chastely beautiful in thought and expression. And the character of Philip is drawn by no unloving hand. There he stands upon the page, perhaps as true a conception of spiritual manhood as woman ever gave shape to,- a strong, self-centred nature, dependent in the highest things, a lover of truth, a firm, faithful Christian thinker and worker. "His spirit was that of one to whom the day of life, from dawn to dusk, was emphatically the Day after which the Night cometh, wherein no man can work; and yet there was in him I know not what sweetness and candor of nature, that saved him from the narrowness that so often marks the compact, established mind." A delightful character, sunny, genial, manly, and, if somewhat ideal, yet none the less useful. The portrait here so lovingly painted lends a charm and confidence to all the discussions in the little volume.

These discussions so vary, as the conversation winds in and out of great spiritual truths, that our only resort, to give any adequate idea of the topics discussed, is quotation. Philip and the author are one so far as opinion is to be valued, but each presents different sides of the same subject. There is all the life of real dialogue. It is not the paragraphs of a book distributed to wooden actors. Philip, if entirely a creation of the brain, holds his own individuality admirably well; if, as is