of Christian character and life is often unsatisfactory and unedifying. In his opinions, though a decided supernaturalist, Milman has often been charged with being a latitudinarian. He is a truly liberal-minded writer, generous in his judgments, candid, and disposed to make concessions even to the assailants of revelation, as far as concessions may be required by truth. If his toleration seems to be tinctured slightly with indifference, there is still no reason to question the sincerity of his attachment to the fundamental doctrines of the Christian system.

The volumes that lie before us are the revised edition of a history that first appeared thirty years ago. If Milman was then thought irreverent in styling Abraham an Arab sheikh and in questioning the absolute correctness of all the Old Testament dates, the turn of events has left him, at least in comparison with Colenso and the Oxford Essayists, on the conservative side. An extended and entertaining preface, attached to this edition, reviews the progress of theological criticism during this long interval. Milman cannot fall in with many of the conjectures of his friend, the late Baron Bunsen, and justly complains that the judgment of Ewald does not keep pace with his learning. Most readers will look with curiosity for Milman's views upon the topics of Old Testament criticism, which are now so much debated. Notice is taken of most of the important questions-as the authorship of the Pentateuch, the date of Deuteronomy and of Daniel, and such difficulties as have been raised by Colenso. The ground taken by the different parties is generally indicated. The author himself, in some instances, does not withhold an opinion. Thus, he pronounces for the general credibility of the Pentateuch, while he thinks that numerical statements in the Old Testament cannot be fully depended on; and he is disposed to accredit a great, if not the principal part of the early books to Moses. But the reader must not expect to find in these volumes an earnest grappling with the questions to which we have adverted. They are handled rather by way of allusion, with no aim at thorough and elaborate discussion. The work, therefore, will not satisfy the demands of the theological scholar. Yet, for him it is agreeable and profitable reading; and for the public generally is adapted, in a very high degree, both to interest and to please.

MERIVALE'S HISTORY OF THE ROMANS (Vols. V. and VI.)—The two additional volumes of the American reprint of Merivale carry

the narrative down from the accession of Tiberius to the triumph of Titus, after the capture of Jerusalem. We have already explained (in a notice of the first volume) the characteristic merits. of this valuable history. The style is dignified and polished-perhaps, too uniformly so to give the highest pleasure. The homely vigor of Grote, who never disdains a plain phrase if it is adapted to convey his thought, and what Gibbon called "the careless and inimitable beauties of Hume," are more to our liking than the sustained propriety of Merivale. It is the antipode of the lawless, whimsical writing of Carlyle, which cannot be called style, and it would be, we conceive, a very agreeable relief from that wearying farrago. When Napoleon issues his long promised life of the great Cæsar, we shall be able to compare the French Emperor's estimate of his hero with that presented on the scholarly page of Merivale.

PALFREY'S HISTORY OF NEW ENGLAND.*-The third volume of Dr. Palfrey's great work completes the "History of New England during the Stuart dynasty." In these three volumes the veteran author has given to the sons of New England, in all the latitudes and longitudes of our country, and in all other countries, a work which cannot cease to be honored till New England itself shall be forgotten. Even if the series of volumes should not be continued, as we earnestly hope it may be, the work is now no more a fragment, but a whole. Nowhere else is the history of our Puritan commonwealths, from the beginning to the date of the English Revolution, recorded so accurately and at the same time so largely; nowhere more reverently and lovingly, or with more of historic sagacity. That the author makes no concealment of his New England affections and sympathies detracts nothing from the trustworthiness of his narration, while it contributes much to all the qualities that charm the reader.

We are sorry to see Dr. Palfrey expressing himself so doubtfully in regard to the further prosecution of his labor in this direction. "If my years were fewer," he says, "I should hope to follow this treatise with another on the History of New England under the

* History of New England. By JOHN GORHAM PALFREY. Volume III. [Duplicate title.] History of New England during the Stuart Dynasty. By JOHN GORHAM PALFREY. In three Volumes. Volume III. Boston: Little, Brown & Company. 1864. 8vo. pp. 648.

Whig dynasties of Great Britain." We trust he may yet live, in a green old age, to produce out of the treasure of the materials which he has already amassed, and with the mastery over those materials which he has acquired and which he can transmit to no successor, a digested and lucid narrative of the vicissitudes through which these commonwealths were carried in the second "cycle" of their colonial existence.

We cannot refrain from repeating a suggestive passage in his present volume. The singular coincidences which it marks show us the natural divisions of the great work which he has planned, and of which the first part (itself a complete work and not a mere fragment of a work unfinished) is now before the public.

"In the history of New England there are chronological parallelisms not unworthy of remark. Some critical events in it were just a century apart. In 1665, the courtiers tried her temper with Lord Clarendon's Commission; in 1765, they tried it with Lord George Grenville's Stamp Act. In 1675 began the attack on her freedom, which I have recorded in this volume; in 1775, began the invasion which led to her independence of Great Britain. But the cycle of New England is eighty-six years. In the Spring of 1603 the family of Stuart ascended the throne of England. At the end of eighty-six years, Massachusetts having been betrayed to her enemies by her most eminent and trusted citizen, Joseph Dudley, the people on the nineteenth day of April, 1689, committed their prisoner, the deputy of the Stuart King, to the fort in Boston which he had built to overawe them. Another eighty-six years passed, and Massachusetts had been betrayed to her enemies by her most eminent and trusted citizen, Thomas Hutchinson, when, at Lexington and Concord, on the nineteenth of April, 1775, her farmers struck the first blow in the war of independence. Another eighty-six years ensued, and a domination of slaveholders, more odious than that of Stuarts or of Guelphs, had been fastened upon her, when, on the nineteenth of April, 1861, the streets of Baltimore were stained by the blood of her soldiers on their way to uphold liberty and law by the rescue of the National Capital."

GILLETT'S HISTORY OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH.*-The historian of John Huss and the Bohemian Reformation has also published a history of American Presbyterianism. His new performance, we are sorry to say, will not add much to the reputation which he gained so fairly by his first and greater work. This is not his fault, for, in the two volumes now before us, he has done

* History of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. By E. H. GILLETT, Author of "The Life and Times of John Huss." Philadelphia: Presbyterian Publication Committee. 2 vols. 12mo. pp. 576, 605.

as well perhaps as the nature of his subject and the embarrassment of his position would admit.

The subject inevitably leads the writer into dry and wearisome details which refuse to be blended or harmonized into unity. In Scotland, the origin of Presbyterianism is identified with the he roic personality of John Knox and with the origin and progress of a national revolution. In this country it was the confluence of many streams, rising from different and distant fountains, and slowly converging towards a common channel, in which they mingled as reluctantly as the turbid waters of the Missouri mingle with the Mississippi. This lack of unity in the subject is an evident and serious difficulty in the way of a historian. The annals of American Presbyterianism can be compiled, and perhaps no man could do that work more faithfully or successfully than Dr. Gillett has done it in these volumes; but to convert those annals into history, who is the artist for so difficult a work?

Dr. Gillett is also embarrassed by his position--so at least it seems to us. His connections and sympathies are with that portion of the Presbyterian denomination which was "exscinded" by a passionate and unscrupulous majority in the General Assembly of 1837; and his book is published by the [New School] Presbyterian Publication Committee. But inasmuch as the body with which he is ecclesiastically connected has already abandoned almost all the distinctive principles and practices for which it suffered the great outrage of excision, and is looking for a reunion (after a few years if not just now) with "the other branch" of Presbyterianism, it cannot but be very difficult for him so to write the story of that outrage and its antecedents, and so unfold its causes, that the history itself, incorporated with the "denominational" literature of the New School body, shall not be an obstacle to the desired reunion.

Yet considering the intrinsic difficulties of the subject, and the embarrassment of his position in the treatment of it, the author has done well. His diligence in collecting and digesting facts, his impartiality in the narration, are so evident that the confidence of the reader in the historian is a matter of course. We heartily commend the work to all readers who desire to know the religious history of this country, in which the churches of the Presbyterian polity have had so important a part, and especially

to all who would understand the genius and tendency of a synodical church-government.

In this connection, we may note the fact that the Presbyterian church in each of its fragments is largely indebted to the eastern part of Connecticut and to Yale College for its historians. Dr. Gillett, and Dr. William H. Foote of Virginia, who has published three volumes of "sketches" of Presbyterian history in Virginia and North Carolina, are both of them natives of Colchester. Dr. Sprague, whose Annals of the American Pulpit have done more than almost any other work to endorse the heroes of Presbyterianism with more than a local or denominational celebrity, was born in a neighboring parish, and, like the two former, received his preparatory education at Bacon Academy in Colchester.

MISS MARTINEAU'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND DURING THE PRESENT CENTURY.*-Twenty years hence there will undoubtedly be a better history of England, during the first half of the nineteenth century, than the one before us. But, at present, this is by far the best single book, on the events of that period, which is generally accessible. The work was commenced by Mr. Charles Knight; and one or two other persons have written special chapters. But by far the greater part of these four volumes was prepared by Miss Harriet Martineau. Mr. Knight had in mind, originally, simply a history of England "during the Peace". or from 1815 to the time of his writing. When the work was passed over to Miss Martineau, she prefixed an introductory volume which gives a view of events in Europe during the first fifteen years of the century, and brought the history down to 1846. The work was published in England in 1849. Lately, at the request of Messrs. Walker, Wise & Co., of Boston, who proposed to republish the work in the United States, Miss Martineau has revised it, and prepared an additional book, in which the narrative is brought down still further, to the commencement of the Russian war-so that the history, as we now have it, embraces in fact the whole period from 1800 to 1854. In politics Miss Martineau is a liberal; and on this accouht, as well as on some others which we might specify, her work, in its spirit, will be more satisfactory to

* History of the Peace. Being a History of England from 1816 to 1854. With an Introduction. 1800 to 1815. By HARRIET MARTINEAU. Boston: Walker, Wise & Co. 1864. Two vols. 12mo. pp. 455-500. Price per vol. $2.50.