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class of believers, who have not, at one time or another, of their history, entered into his sympathies.

"The author," Dr. Aiton observes, " in the spring of last year, was permitted by Divine Providence to accomplish what from his earliest recollections had been the desire of his heart-a journey into the Bible-Lands of the East, into the once stirring localities of Western Asia, and homeward through the classic countries of Greece, Sicily, and Italy. And having accomplished such a jaunt of about ten thousand miles in extent, he feels naturally desirous to record the memorials of a summer marked by such change of scenes and varieties of feeling, that he may share them with those who, from experience in this way, sympathize with them,-that he may recall them for his own satisfaction,-and that he may interest the reading public with some information, and several pious reflections."

So extensive a pilgrimage, undertaken and prosecuted with a feeling of obvious enthusiasm, deserved a record; and fastidious, indeed, will that reader be who does not accompany our author, in his lengthened and perilous journey, with more than ordinary delight.

"I think," says he, "I have travelled further to the East, and traversed more interesting countries in one trip, than many single tourists have hitherto done. Different men view even the same country with different eyes, and several cross lights are required to bring out the real state of matters. The countries referred to in the following pages are at present in a state of rapid transition, which should be accurately noticed in detail, as often as travellers have the opportunity. In Africa, on the banks of the Nile, in the Holy Land, down the Jordan, and along the shores of the Dead Sea, in Asia Minor, throughout European Turkey, and especially in Italy, the prophecies are in the act of being speedily fulfilled to a greater or less amount in the different localities; and important events are turning on the wheel of fortune, which may, ere long, astonish the civilized world. Every movement, therefore, should be marked, the progress towards civilization and Christianity should be detailed from time to time; and the working of the five great rival European powers, which are all greedily gaping for a slice of Turkey, when it is cut up, should be detected; and the manners and inclinations of a population so enormous should be shadowed forth in every variety of light."

Such are our traveller's views in reference to those who aim at accomplishing what he has done; and we are free to acknowledge that he has, in his own way, carried out his plan with considerable success; and that in all cases where reverence for Divine truth

was put to the test, he has nobly indicated and defended his convictions. The book is thoroughly orthodox in its whole cast and complexion; and no one will rise up from its perusal with any leanings towards neology, or popery, or political despotism, or any of the huge evils, which, in the East, are now affecting and oppressing vast portions of the human family.

We do not attribute the highest qualities of critical observation to our author;-but he indicates much common sense, makes very light of the laborious trifling of many who have preceded him in travel, shows a vast amount of persevering courage, and comes in general to conclusions which carry conviction along with them.

Dr. Aiton's tour extended to Egypt, the Holy Land, Asia Minor, and Italy;—and, along the whole line of his journey, he found ample materials for interesting record, which will render his book a very instructive companion to all who are anxious to become acquainted with the actual state and prospects of the countries through which he passed. There is great vigour and terseness in the author's descriptions, even of subjects very familiar to the reader. We may illustrate this, in his sketch of Carthage, in passing up the Mediterranean.

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"To-day," he writes, at breakfast, our intelligent captain told us, that he had a treat in store for us this forenoon. We shall be off Cape Carthage in two hours, and I shall run the ship as near the shore as I can, that you may see the site and ruins of this ancient city. It is within the promontory on the north-east side of the Lake of Tunis.' In a minute all was excitement, and every body was on deck, and the words, Dido and Æneas, Hamilcar and Hannibal, Scipio, and Cato, and Marius, were in every body's mouth. I felt as if one of the wonders of of the world was just about to be exhibited. And so it was. What a halo of renown there is round these seas, capes, and bays; and how many school-boy recollections rose in delightful succession on my mind! In that deep and noble bay lies the grave of a fallen empire, once the emporium of the Mediterranean, and the rival of imperial Rome. On that flat and waving shore, now within sight, stood a celebrated city, the site of which, when I was at school, I little expected ever to behold. The harbour is now choked up, and the ruins are now nearly three miles distant from the sea, but they once extended to the very shore. How many thousands of ships once crowded that bay! How many hundreds of thousands of Carthaginians have left that port to invade Italy, and Spain, and Sicily, and Sardinia! With what pomp and pride must Hannibal have sailed over these waves to conquer at Cannæ

and to beard the Romans at the gates of their capital! But how changed now the scene! There was not a ship within sight; utter desolation pervaded the shore, and the daughter of Tyre sat lonely on her rock by the sea. For two or three miles along the beach there are continuous ruins, buildings of the city, blocks of mortar, columns of marble, fragments of piers, and jutting foundations. These strew the site of Carthage, to tell us what it once was. The land is now divided into fields, and green with corn. The bay is beautiful as ever. Its headlands and rocks in the sea are as picturesque as any in the whole Mediterranean; but altogether the scene is lively and lovely." Pages 20, 21.

On nearing Alexandria our author thus sketchily and beautifully writes: "We are approaching Alexandria, the ancient capital, and still the key of Egypt,-the connecting link of the eastern and western world,-for eighteen hundred years the emporium of commerce, the city of Ptolemies and Cleopatra, -the burial-place of its founder, Alexander the Great, and the best monument modern times can produce of the extraordinary sagacity of that warlike Macedonian of old. Here, too, was collected in ancient times the greatest library the world ever produced, and which was burnt on the principle that if it contained only what was in the Koran it was superfluous, and if it contained any thing else it was dangerous, and ought to be destroyed. Here the Septuagint translation of the Bible, one of the noblest works of man on earth, was effected. Here, too, stood the ancient light-house, the famous tower of Pharos, said to be one of the seven wonders of the old world." Page 41.

All the author's peregrinations in the land of the Pharoahs are described with a certain raciness and trueness to nature, which will make them both acceptable and entertaining. And his discussion of the vexed question as to the part of the Red Sea at which the Israelites passed to the Asiatic coast, will be found something more than amusing. To us it appears, that he has fixed the spot which best answers to all the miraculous and other references of the sacred text. We commend this portion of Dr. Aiton's work to the attentive examination of the Biblical student.

The author's account of his mental impressions, on entering Jerusalem, is truly affecting.

Often," he observes, "had I pondered what my feelings would be when I first set my unhallowed feet on the streets of the Holy City. For weeks before I had wondered whether the interest of the reality would come down from the association of these scenes so long and so piously cherished. Ascend in the scale I imagined it could not. But in this I was mistaken. Now that the first gaze of curiosity had subsided, and the

mere novelty of such sublime desolation had passed away, so far from being joyful at what I had accomplished, I felt something unusually heavy and humbled at the heart. The impression was so intense that a kind of faintness came over me, and without thinking of it or being able to prevent it, I first burst into tears, and then gave utterance to prayer. I saw already several aged and feeble Jews, mean and melancholy, engaged at their devotions, muttering the law aloud, and tearing as it were the stones of the street. With wild lamentations they were imploring the God of their fathers to restore to them the sceptre that had passed away, and to send them the Messiah, that this land might be their own. I thought the coincidence remarkable, when I heard at the same time, from the minarets of the Turks, the wellknown Mahometan cry sounded and sung in long triumphant chorus, 'There is no God but God, and Mahomet is his prophet.' The contrast brought a feeling of fear over my frame, and the expression of Jacob when he awoke from his dream at Bethel occurred to me: 'And Jacob was afraid and said, How dreadful is this place!' Sympathizing with the poor Jews, Pray,' said I, 'for the peace of Jerusalem. They shall prosper that love thee. Peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces! And as to the proud prayer of the Mahometan, I said,' Now, indeed, has the sceptre departed from Judah, and the land become a prey to the spoiler.' In particular, I was grateful that the Lord had gone before me in this journey, watching over me in his generous providence through all my perils and privations both by sea and land. And now I felt elevated that in the language of the Psalmist, he had thus brought me to great honour in permitting me a sinner to visit the city of David." Pages 176-178.

But we dare not extend our critique. In every successive spot visited by our author, his reflections are striking-in many cases original; while the uniform effect is profound reverence for the oracles and the providence of God.

Through the Lesser Asia, and to the desolate spots where once stood the seven Apocalyptic Churches, we should heartily like to follow the author; but space forbids. Suffice it to say, that his sketches of these far-famed spots are remarkably vivid, and that his moral reflections upon them are truly faithful and touching to the heart.

When he arrives at Rome; he is there the accomplished classic, the well-read historian, the acute philosophical observer of men and things: but we rejoice to say, he is there, also, the earnest-the enlightened the uncompromising Protestant, not carried away by the glare and tinsel which have allured and corrupted so many of our namby-pamby Oxford

Divines. After a portrait of Rome, as it now is, and once had been, which will never be surpassed in its magnificent outline, and rich colouring and effect, our author fixes vividly the Protestant moral, which all sound-hearted men ought to feel when in the Seven-hilled City.

"I had," says he, "read the Scriptures as applicable to the locality of St. Paul's bay at Malta, on the banks of the Nile and Jordan, on the shores of the Red and Dead Seas, at Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Bethany, at Tyre and Sidon, at Carmel and Lebanon, and on a high rock of a Sabbath evening overlooking Athens, and the Hill of Mars; but never did I peruse a portion of Holy Writ with more honest conviction that it applied to the spot where I was for the time, than when in Rome I read St. John's vision of the great whore sitting on the scarlet-coloured beast, arrayed in purple and scarlet, with a golden cup in her hand, from the drinking out of which she was drunken with the blood of the saints. When from the top of St. Peter's I counted, as pointed out to me by a native papist, the seven hills on which the city was built, viz., the Mons Palatinus, Capitolinus, Aventinus, Quirilinus, Coelius, Viminalis, and Esquilinus, I trembled at the angel's interpretation of St. John, of the mystery of the beast, and of his seven heads which are seven mountains on which the woman sitteth. And the ten horns are the ten kingdoms of modern Europe. And the woman which thou sawest is that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth. And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold, and precious stones, and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand, full of abominations and filth of her fornication. And upon her forehead was a name written, Mystery, Babylon the Great, The Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the earth.' Yes; every street, every square, every church, every mass, the Pope, every cardinal, and every priest; the Vatican, its gardens and groves, fountains and fawns, were to my mind just so many interpretations of the mystery of the beast, and of the woman, the great whore, the mother of harlots, and abominations of the earth. Rev. xvii."

Amen, Dr. Aiton! This is the Bible view to take of Antichristian Rome. Pagan Rome was not half such a spectacle of wickedness, and could not be; because it never fastened its huge system of iniquity and cruelty upon the pure and spotless religion of the Holy

Saviour.

We must say, we have read Dr. Aiton's volume with a high degree of admiration; and, with whatever defects may attach to it, we recommend it to our readers with the utmost cordiality, feeling persuaded that its fascination will constrain them to read it from beginning to end as it has constrained us.

NINEVEH AND ITS PALACES. The Discoveries of Botta and Layard, applied to the Elucidation of Holy Writ. By JOSEPH BONOMI, F.R.S.L. 8vo, pp. 402.

Office of the Illustrated London Library. THE title of this most splendid volume very accurately describes its general design; and we have pleasure in announcing to our readers that the respected and learned author has most successfully carried out his design; affording demonstrative proof of the great importance of the late Assyrian exhumations to the Biblical student, in enabling him fully to understand the multiplied referenc ences of the sacred oracles to the remote nations of heathen antiquity.

The author has attempted a system of arrangement, in his delineations, which, whether arbitrary or founded in nature, will greatly facilitate the understanding of his laborious criticisms. His plan has been suggested to him by an examination of the sculptures themselves, as deposited in the Louvre and in the British Museum. He has studied the ground plans of the respective structures, with the original positions of the friezes; and thus, selecting for himself a starting-post, he has pursued a systematic course throughout the whole of the ruined chambers, reading at once the sculptures on the walls, and their illustrative history in the sacred records.

He modestly remarks," Whether the tone of reasoning adopted is erroneous or just, must be left to the decision of the readers; but though my inferences and conclusions may be questioned by many, it is hoped that the facts in the subject-matter will be interesting to all."

The author is evidently a man of acute penetration, and of no mean power of research. It would be a rashness, which we would not commit, to indorse every conclusion he has reached. We will only say, that we have followed him, with no little satisfaction into the vast fields of thought into which he has conducted us; and that, from what we have seen of his powers of analysis and logi cal investigation of recondite themes, we should exercise some considerable amount of caution in differing from him. He makes every subject he touches very fascinating; and if our young intelligent readers will take our advice, they will follow this accomplished decipherer of mysterious symbols, through all his wanderings amidst the Assyrian ruins, and listen well to what he will tell them about sculptures and figures, which they can little understand without his aid. How beautiful are his opening remarks!— "Far away y- a thousand miles-from the highways of modern commerce, and the tracks of ordinary travel, lay a city buried in the sandy earth of a half-desert Turkish province, with no certain trace of its place of

sepulchre. Vague tradition said that it was hidden somewhere near the river Tigris; but for above two thousand years its known existence in the world was a mere name-a word. That name suggested the idea of an ancient capital of fabulous splendour and magnitude; a congregation of palaces and other dwellings, encompassed by walls and ramparts, vast but scarcely real.

"More than two thousand years had it thus lain in its unknown grave, when a French savant and a wandering English scholar, urged by a noble inspiration, sought the seat of the once powerful empire, and, searching till they found the dead city, threw off its shroud of sand and ruin, and revealed once more to an astonished and curious world the temples, the palaces, and the idols; the representations of the war, and the triumphs of peaceful art of the ancient Assyrians. The Nineveh of Scripture, the Nineveh of the oldest historians; the Nineveh-twin-sister of Babylon-glorying in a civilization of pomp and power, all traces of which were believed to be gone;-the Nineveh, in which the captive tribes of Israel had laboured and wept, was, after a sleep of twenty centuries, again brought to light. The proofs of ancient splendour were again beheld by living eyes, and, by the skill of the draftsman and the pen of antiquarian travellers, made known to the world.

"And the strange and stirring story of how courage and learning, talent and enterprise, patience and industry, rescued from the earth those treasures of a long-gone people, it is the intention of the following pages to tell."

How successfully Mr. Bonomi has told his tale, we will leave our readers to determine, when they have feasted themselves with his spirit-stirring investigations as we have done. How the Bible is being exalted and vindicated by all the facts of science, all the mysterious revelations of Divine Providence, and all the researches into a remote antiquity!

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we could not help feeling that our readers would be grateful to us for making them acquainted with a work which, in the narration of simple facts, has all the air and excitement of romance.

These "Iron Roads" are a grand feature of the age in which we live; and they are spreading far and wide over the whole civilized world. That they have good and evil in them; at least as they are managed by imperfect beings, will not be readily doubted.

Some of the evils are formidable. They have generated a vast amount of unhealthy and dangerous speculation; in which we fear many professed Christians have had their full share. And can any sober-minded Christian patriot look at our Sabbath Excursion Trains, disgorging every Lord's-day, from all our principal cities and towns, hundreds of thousands of the idle, the thoughtless, and the gay, without feeling a deep pang of regret? Neither of these, indeed, is a necessary evil. The speculation, so far as it was dishonest and unchristian, might have been eschewed; and Sabbath travelling and traffick, save so far as postal arrangements and other necessary provisions were concerned, ought to have been sternly resisted by the legislature.

But there are other views of rail-roads which we can contemplate with unmingled satisfaction and delight.

What a magnificent proof do they afford of the intelligence and enterprise of the age! The engineering power they display is perfectly astonishing, as our readers will perceive, if they will make themselves acquainted with Mr. Williams's laborious statistics of the overwhelming masses of rock and other substances which have been tunnelled from the bowels of our mountains.

What facilities, too, have they supplied for social and commercial intercourse, in the length and breadth of the land! Could our forefathers revisit the scenes of their earthly sojourn, would they not be credulous of the very testimony of their senses, when they found that journeys which they were wont to accomplish in a fortnight, can now be performed in the space of ten or twelve hours?

By means also of rail-roads, producers of all kinds of commodities have been enabled, with incomparable speed, to convey them to the best markets; so that even perishable articles can be sent, in good condition, from the extremities of the kingdom to the metropolis.

Have not rail-roads, too, tended greatly to equalize the prices, and to increase the consumption of many articles both of luxury and comfort?

And what marvels are the telegraphic wires of our rail roads, and the submarine tele

graphs suggested by them! For commerce, for political, for social, for religious, for police, and other purposes, what a surpassing invention is this!

But are not rail-roads now, and will they not be in a coming age more and more, handmaids to philanthropy and Christianity? Are they not destined, when they shall have spread all the world over, to aid, in a marvellous degree, the diffusion of the gospel? And, are they not among the "all things which the Son of God will subdue to himself for the purpose of advancing his own glorious kingdom? These are not dreams of fancy, but realities, the fruits of which we are already beginning to reap. Could we see all the Sabbath trains arrested, except the mails, we should have everything to hope, and nothing to fear from our "Iron Roads."

But we must bring these musings to a close. Mr. Williams's volume is the most instructive of its kind that has seen the light. We took it up, thinking that only rail-road proprietors and engineers could take interest in it. No greater mistake could have been committed. It is a book of extraordinary ingenuity and power, and of most suggestive character, which we commend to the perusal of all thinking men.

A HISTORY OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT, compiled from a Comparison of various Writers; with a Chronological Summary. By the Rev. THEODORE ALOIS BUCKLEY, B.A., Chaplain of Christ Church, Editor of Translations of the "Decrees and Canons" and "Catechism of the Council of Trent," fc. 8vo, pp. 582.

George Routledge.

WHATEVER variety of opinion may be entertained as to some of the opinions expressed by this historian of the Council of Trent; we think there can be but one feeling produced on the minds of candid readers, that it is by far the best work in our own, or any other language, on the subject of which it treats. This, we are aware, is high praise; but we venture on it conscientiously, after a careful examination of the work; and express it the more readily, because we perceive that Mr. Buckley is by far too high a churchman for us. The work will be of eminent service to all who, in our times, are called to wage war with the antichristian church of Rome. The author will says, and he might extend his reference, that "in reviewing the history of the Roman Church, we must not consider mankind as free agents, yet living under the dispensation of God; but as fettered in their enjoyment of that dispensation by trustees, whom they have preferred to the Divine Author of the covenant itself."

AN ANALYSIS OF CHURCH PRINCIPLES. By the Rev. CHRISTOPHER NEVILL. 12mo. pp. 154.

James Ridgway.

A VERY instructive book, in this inquiring age, and well deserving the careful perusal of all who advocate the theory of our Establishment. As Nonconformists, we abide by our doctrine of private judgment, and voluntary Christianity; and feel that we should only pass from the solid rock to the shifting sand, were we for a moment to quit our principles; but in nothing are our convictions more firmly rooted than this, that, so long as we have an Established Church, it must remain under the absolute control of the State, to prevent the extravagant tyranny and persecution of the High Church and Romanizing party. In their recent public speeches, and in all their doings for what they call liberty, they have approached so near the spirit and the language of rebellion that, had they lived in other times, they would have been called to account for their disloyal references to her majesty the Queen, the unquestionable Head of the English Episcopate. No, no-we say to all Churchmen, "You may leave your Establishment, and claim for yourselves that liberty wherewith Christ makes his servants free;but, for the safety of all national interests

-the liberty of Englishmen, and the peace and quiet of godly ministers in the Establishment, we must hold you, while you remain Churchmen, to your original bargain, there would be no end of mischief, if you were relieved from state control, while you retained your church power. Make a disruption, gentlemen, if you please;-but the State Church must remain the loyal subject of the State."-Nothing can shake us in this;-not all the sophistry of Dr. Pusey or Mr. Gladstone. We call on all the friends of liberty to keep wide awake on this subject in these times. Something is in the wind; let Englishmen determine that it shall evaporate into thin air.

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