a book for which they have good reason to be grateful, and of heartily wishing it suc

cess.

SIAM.

The Land of the White Elephant, Sights and Scenes in South-Eastern Asia: a Personal Narrative of Travel and Adventure in Farther India, embracing the Countries of Burma, Siam, Cambodia, and CochinChina (1871-2). By Frank Vincent, jun. With Map, Plans, and numerous Illustrations. (Low & Co.)

IN the volume to which this somewhat sensational title has been prefixed, Mr. Vincent, an American citizen, describes a journey which he lately made to parts of Birma, Siam, and Camboja, and which it took him eleven months to complete. The author claims for his narrative "little else than the merit of being true," and we, for our part, must decline to award him a very much higher meed of praise. Accurate, in the main, he undoubtedly is, and though there are a good many errors scattered up and down the book, yet, perhaps, these are not so frequent as we might have anticipated when we consider that the writer was unacquainted with the language of the peoples he visited, and stayed but a very brief time among them. His style is clumsy and harsh, abounding in abrupt parentheses which

break the flow of his sentences; and we have not discovered a single new fact or one addition to our stock of ideas in the entire volume. From this declaration our readers

latterly, I believe, now (sic) reports directly to the (English) Home Government."

We really do not require this sort of information; and as to Singapore, a recent work by a much more experienced man (Mr. Cameron) gives a full account of that colony, and Mr. Vincent's description is, therefore, not merely superficial, but superfluous too. Then junks "all have huge eyes painted upon their we find, on the same page, that Chinese prows, for, says 'John,' 'Spose no hab got eyes, how can see?" Why tire us with such

more than thrice-told tales as these? Here is another extract from the traveller's diary (see p. 105):—

"During our stay at Singapore we received every kindness and attention from the American lived with his wife in the same hotel. Dr. J. and Consul, Dr. Jewell, of Washington, D.C., who his family are Mississippians by birth, education, and residence, but they remained faithfully loyal to the National Government during our late terrible civil war," &c.

Again, it is related, on p. 232, that,

"There were two kinds of soup, served in large blue china tureens, pigs' feet, and boiled beef, broiled chicken, cooked spread out flat with the feet attached, fried sweet potatoes (here a white variety), boiled and baked rice, half a dozen bowls ties of condiments, &c.: then followed a dozen of mixed and minced meats, two or three variebowls-"

and so forth; and we may observe, that there are no less than eleven passages in which Mr. Vincent tells his readers what he or other people had to eat. The names of places and will infer that we are not prepared to rank the the titles of officials are, in the main, corpresent work among the standard authorities which are obviously due to the subsequent rectly given, but there are numerous errors, on Indo-China. The suggestions which the inability of the writer to decipher his own King took occasion to offer when he gave entries. Thus we have (p. 137) the Menam audience to Mr. Vincent at Mandalay will Tacheen (River Tacheen) spoken of as the prove of some interest to those who are acquainted with the policy and prospects of Mahachen River, and, a few lines further Birma; but, save in that instance, there is down, we find "another river-the Haichin" really not a passage in the book which deserves-spoken of; the truth being that it was the to be read a second time. Perhaps, however, it is hardly fair to be too severe upon a pro

duction of this class. The book has been a

considerable time in preparation-at any rate, we saw it announced by the publishers many months ago; and we had, therefore, hoped that when it appeared at last it might turn out to be of importance. Our expectations have not been fulfilled; but it is probable that Mr. Vincent aims at nothing more than producing a few light and readable chapters, suited to the tastes of the untravelled public. To accomplish this purpose he has simply written out the contents of an elaborate diary, in which he must have diligently noted down in minute detail his experiences from day to day. Such, at any rate, seems to us to have been the plan he followed in making up his book; and we suspect that this is not the first instance in which a volume of travels has been written down to the level of a particular class, or pieced together according to rule of

thumb.

We cannot, for example, understand why, if not merely to fill up the book, the author tells his readers (at p. 92) that,

"Penang forms, together with province Wellesley, Malacca, and Singapore, what is called the Straits Settlements, the government being under the direction of the Lieutenant-Governor of Singapore" [by the way, an inexact statement], "who formerly was subject to the Viceroy of India, but

same river, the Tacheen, down which the traveller, after emerging from the Nakhontraveller, after emerging from the Nakhonchaisee Creek, had been rowing all day, until he reached the village of Tacheen, at its mouth, and entered another canal. Many similar inaccuracies might be quoted. The most amusing one is where we are told (p. 80) that the Government of Ava enforces obedience on any dependent tribe in Laos who may threaten resistance by entirely cutting off from them so necessary an article of diet as that these tribes export cattle. Yet at the same time it is remarked First of all, the Laos tribes do not eat suet; and, secondly, if they export cattle they cannot be in want of it. The puzzle is explained if we suppose that in Mr. Vincent's diary the original word was "salt."

suet.

On p. 76, the Panthay rebellion is alluded to as still going on. fact when the diary was written, but Mr. No doubt this was the Vincent ought really to have informed himself that Taly was captured a few months back, and its Mohammedan leaders were dispersed. It is somewhat difficult to discover what were

the objects which Mr. Vincent had in view

commonplace and unscientific to warrant any such supposition: he appears to be nothing more than a traveller who has taken the trouble to compile a book of very moderate merits on subjects which have all been treated much more fully by recent writers, whose works we must confess that he does not seem to

have sufficiently studied before he sat down to his task.

It is disappointing to find that Mr. Vincent could only afford so short a time to the He was exploration of the Cambojan ruins. nineteen days in journeying from Bangkok to Angcor (on the whole, rather quick travelling), and he set out on his return four days afterwards. He has, therefore, been able to add nothing to what we already know concerning these remains, and his account is far inferior Mouhot left behind him. to that compiled from the notes which M. The authorities

proper to be consulted about the ancient Cambojan Empire are Dr. Bastian's work on Eastern Asia, and the recently published official account of the French journey of exploration in Indo-China. Mr. Ferguson's theories are not warranted by the evidence. Taking his accounts of the Cambojan ruins at second hand, he adapts them to the "tree and serpentration for certain trees and serpents is in some worship" theory. A sort of subsidiary veneBuddhist superstitions; but the people who strange way mixed up everywhere with the built the temples and cities of Tchin-la (as the Chinese historians term it) were essentially Buddhists. Neither is it necessary, at least in our view, to assign to these ruins the extrato them. Thus, Mr. Vincent seems to follow ordinary antiquity which some have attributed Mouhot in believing them to be 2,000 years old; and speaking of the arched roofs in the galleries of the great temple, he describes their ceilings as "uncarved."

This

Had he looked a little more narrowly, he might have discovered that the interior faces of those arches-the only rough-hewn portions of the temple-were originally hidden from view by elaborately-carved wooden ceilings. And there are places here and there where fragments of the woodwork remain. fact must preclude us from assigning a very early date to its construction. Moreover, it is wholly unnecessary to do so. The character in which the numerous inscriptions have been written no doubt differs from modern Siamese and Cambojan, from the Pali and the Sanscrit, but it has been shown to be akin to the three latter. There is, or was, a priest at Udong, who professes to read a good deal of it; and who has picked out the alphabet; and it is only because his knowledge of Sanscrit fails him that he has not made his interpretations complete. Misgovernment, oppression, war, famine, and pestilence, accompanied at last by the population, as well as by the rapid growth of wholesale migration of the remnants of the tropical vegetation, would bring the Cambojan temples to their present stage of decay with far greater rapidity than might be the case in cooler climes. We cannot here do more than

thus touch upon this very interesting subject.

a fancied resemblance in the sound of a

native name. But it does not follow from this that Byzantine artists did not furnish the designs. We are sorry that we cannot speak very favourably of Mr. Vincent's production; it is, however, impossible for a just critic to pronounce more than an extremely qualified approval. The book may, perhaps, entertain some readers, but it has no fascinations for us. The Marquis de Beauvoir spent but one week in Siam, yet he wrote a most interesting account of his visit. How was it he succeeded where Mr. Vincent has failed? First, he wields a brilliant pen; and, secondly, he attached himself in Bangkok to a Roman Catholic priest who had spent thirty years in the country, and pumped his informant dry about Siam and the Siamese. Mr. Vincent, in every place he. visited (with one exception), got hold of the wrong men instead of the right ones. Thus in Mandalay, he depended upon a Chinaman, in Bangkok, chiefly on the American Consul, who had been but two years there, and knew nothing of the language; he travelled down the great lake alone; at Penompein, he picked up a Manila man, perhaps a half-caste Spaniard or a Portuguese, and a sailor named Edwards, and it was under the auspices and guidance of the latter that he made himself acquainted with Saigon. If Mr. Vincent had not been so shy as he would appear to have been of the English and French officials in the districts which he traversed, he might have written a better book.

History of the English Institutions. By Philip Vernon Smith, M.A. (Rivingtons.)

IF it be, as we think, a mark of learning in a short historical treatise that its sins are sins of omission, not of commission, the author may, on the whole, fairly be awarded that praise for this History of the English Institutions,' even the omissions of which might escape notice, but for its rather ambitious title. It contains, in a short compass, an amount of information not otherwise accessible to students without considerable research. The chapter on Local Government in particular is well executed. It would be hard to name any other book in which the history of our local institutions, from the Gemots of the first Teutonic settlers down to the County Court, the Local Government Board, and the School Board of our own day, is to be found. There is, however, a repetition in this chapter of an erroneous proposition laid down in the first chapter of the book, that, after the Conquest, "the clergy, with the exception of the higher ecclesiastics, who held baronies, were excluded from the right of participating in the judicial and administrative business of the whole kingdom, and of the separate shires and hundreds." The object of the ordinance of William the First separating the spiritual from the secular courts was ecclesiastical privilege and immunity, not ecclesiastical exclusion and disability; the real exclusions and disabilities were imposed on the laity, not on the clergy. Lay judges were precluded from taking cognizance of causes over which the Church claimed jurisdiction, and the laity were subjected to the canon law and to the exclusive jurisdiction of ecclesiastical courts, in respect of many lay interests which would have been better protected in secular courts. So far from being excluded from participation

in the judicial and administrative business of the whole kingdom, the clergy of all grades took the most active part in both administrative and judicial business down to the reign of Edward the Third, and down to the sixteenth century the officers of the Court of Chancery and the Barons of the Exchequer were generally in ecclesiastical orders.

On the influence of the class of ceorls as a whole, and on the openings to individuals to rise to the rank of thegn and of bishop before the Norman Conquest, Mr. Smith makes a remark which deserves consideration in connexion with the rise in our own day of individual workmen to the rank of great capitalists. | "The class, as a whole, became gradually depressed. The mere fact that the leading men were being perpetually taken out of it, created of itself a tendency in that direction." But the statement that subinfeudation was one of the chief causes of an improvement in the condition of the villeins from the time of Henry the Second, would hardly meet with the assent of some of our best English historians. Mr. Stubbs would probably be of opinion that subinfeudation tended to crush the lowest class of tenants beneath a superincumbent mass of middle-men, and that the statute of Quia Emptores was practically a boon to the villein.

Mr. Smith's arrangement of subjects appears to us, in some respects, awkward and inconvenient, as leading to cross divisions and strange postponements. The reader is bandied back and forwards from chapter to chapter, and sent up and down from section to section, without even numbers of the chapters and sections in the margin or dates at the head of each section to assist his research. Much of the matter in the chapter on Legislation would naturally find a place in the one on Parliament; and all account of the king-an institution which played so great a part in our constitutional history before as well as after the Roman Conquest-is postponed until nearly the middle of the book. A desire of brevity is, doubtless, in part, the cause of some inaccuracies and obscurities, and some serious shortcomings. Of the first, we have an instance in the statement, p. 4, that "they (the people) made continual encroachments on the folc-land by converting portion after portion of it into boc-land-land held by private individuals." The author may be full of learning on the subject of folc-land and boc-land, but his language on the point is so loose, that an unlearned student might conclude that the people promiscuously cut up the folc-land among them, or that individuals from time to time cut slices off the common territory and appropriated them. And surely a student has reason to complain of the absence of all explanation of the meaning of "the personal element" in the following passage :-"While in the early Teutonic polity the relations of the people to their rulers were purely personal in their nature, these relations under the feudal system were almost as exclusively territorial. But though dominant for a time, territorial relationship did not stamp out, or even permanently over-ride, the incidents of personal relationship. Whatever excellence our institutions possess over those of other nations, is due in great measure to the fact that the personal element was left in our constitution sufficiently strong to contend with, and even

tually over-master the territorial element." Macaulay's reprobation of "the unpleasant trick which Gibbon brought into fashion of telling a story by allusion," ought to have sufficiently discountenanced this trick on the part of historical writers, especially of handbooks for students, yet it is one of their commonest offences to this day. They speak, for instance, of "the Lower Empire" without a word of explanation; and though Mr. Smith is guiltless of that particular imitation of Gibbon's unpleasant trick, he says, p. 83, with respect to early English towns possessing an independent organization,-"These boroughs (including cities) were not handed over by the Conqueror to his barons with the counties in which they were situate." Cities are italicized, yet the student is not told what distinction between cities and boroughs is denoted.

The author's chief sins are, as we have already indicated, sins of omission. For this he gives the excuse in the Preface that "the omission of all notice of the law of treason, and of other matters more or less akin to the subject of the work, has been due to a desire to compress the volume within the smallest possible limits." Royalty, we have already observed, ought to have been specially referred to in the first chapter of the work, as an institution which played a leading part in the early history of the English constitution; the omission, however, is in a good measure atoned for by the learning on the subject contained in a later chapter. But the omission of the Church clearly arises from the fact that Mr. Smith is weak on that side of our early history. He refers among his authorities particularly to Mr. Stubbs's 'Illustrations of English Constitutional History,' and the student who consults that very useful and learned work will not find the influence of the ecclesiastical element over the formation of English institutions, both prior to and after the Norman Conquest, passed over as it has been by Mr. Smith. The history of our laws relating to land, again, and of the causes which have formed our peculiar land system, is disposed of in a sentence which contrives to compress a good deal of mis-statement into a few words, page 27, respecting the effect of the 12 Car. II. c. 24:-"Thus was completely swept away all that was burdensome in the remnants of feudalism; for we cannot regard as such the surviving traces of it, some of which even now exist in many of our institutions, and especially in our law of landed property." The causes of the growth of our double system of law and equity, too, might surely claim a place in a 'History of the English Institutions,' and we cannot accept the meagre reference to the Court of Chancery in the chapter on Judicature as satisfying that claim. We might, also, have reasonably looked at the present day for some notice of the institutions relating to women in such a history; but beyond a reference to the descendibility of feudal lands and peerages in the female line, and to some statutes of the reigns of Elizabeth, Anne, and Victoria, there is not a word in Mr. Smith's book bearing directly or indirectly on the rights and disabilities, personal or proprietary, political or civil, of half the community. It would, perhaps, be too much to expect in so short a treatise anything of the philosophy of the

into several fractions and flying-columns under brigadiers, who were despatched in whatever direction they were urgently needed. BrigadierGeneral Hope Grant held the most important of these commands, besides exercising the supreme supervision of military affairs in the province in Sir Colin's absence. He now received the K.C.B., and in February, 1858, was promoted to the rank of Major-General. The events of the subsequent year, although comparatively unimportant, were, nevertheless, very stirring, and found plenty of occupation in beating up the detached parties of rebels wherever congregated, and in making "daurs" or raids on disloyal chiefs near the frontier and on the 26th of February, 1860, Sir Hope Grant, having been gazetted a LieutenantGeneral, sailed for China to take command of the British forces in that country.

Memoir of William Ellis, Missionary in the South Seas and Madagascar. By his Son. With an Estimate of his Character and Work, by H. Allon, D.D. (Murray.) By all who take any interest in Missionary enterprise, the name of William Ellis must always be associated with the work of evangelization in both quarters of the southern hemisphere, carried on for three quarters of a century by the London Missionary Society; but to many of the present generation he is known exclusively by the latest and crowning work of his life, viz., the restoration of the persecuted Church in Madagascar, an island, however, which he never personally visited until he had attained his sixtieth year.

William Ellis was born in 1794, the year before the establishment of the Society with which his life and labours were subsequently so intimately related. The child of poor and illiterate parents, his earliest days were spent in the school of hard work and poverty.

"When scarcely more than six years old he was employed at the rate of two shillings a week in winding cotton-wicks with one hand, while with the other he nursed his little brother, thus reliev

ing his mother of a portion of her task and adding his mite to the family earnings."

The only teaching he seems to have enjoyed was a much-interrupted attendance at a small school kept by a Unitarian minister, and at twelve years of age he went to work with a market-gardener, from which time he never cost his father a penny, but contributed from his small earnings to the support of his family. We next hear of him working in the garden of a clergyman, and subsequently in some extensive nurseries at Kingsland, where he

practical skill that he succeeded in acquiring during the few months that remained before his departure from England is truly amazing. During this brief interval of only six months he made himself acquainted with the art of printing, and became expert in all its processes, from type-setting to imposing the formes and working the press. He also learned the art of bookbinding. For some months, moreover, he attended lectures in several branches of medicine and surgery, as well as the medical and surgical practice at St. Bartholomew's laid aside, some portion of the time being spent at Hospital. Nor was scholastic learning entirely Homerton Academy, where, under Dr. Pye Smith, the foundation, at least, was laid for the study of classics. In fact, he omitted no opportunity of adding to his stores of knowledge."

In 1815 the young candidate was ordained by Dr. Waugh and the following day married to Mary Mercy Moor, and within a few months he started with his wife for the South Seas. They first settled in the island of Eimeo, one such was Mr. Ellis's linguistic facility that he of the Georgian or Windward group, where subject in the Tahitian language within much could converse familiarly on any common less than twelve months. Here the Missionary's gardening experiences were of great service to him; he introduced various fruits and vegetables which have since become valuable additions to the wealth of the islands, and a source of considerable foreign trade. The next mission station the young couple occupied was Huahine, one of the Society Islands: here. sugar and cotton cultivation was introduced, and, besides the preaching the gospel, a code of civil laws was drawn up and trial by jury instituted, whilst capital punishment was omitted. The Sandwich Islands were next visited, and Ellis was one of the first Europeans to visit and describe the volcano of Kiranea.

In 1824, on his way homeward, Ellis preached in many of the principal cities of America, and reached England with his invalid wife after nearly ten years' absence. Thus ended the first period of active missionary labour.

From 1825 to 1830 Ellis was actively employed as travelling agent in advocating the claims of the Missionary Society before public audiences throughout the United Kingdom, and there was not a town of any importance "Successful as were which he did not visit. Mr. Ellis's efforts on behalf of missions-in pulpits, on platforms and in social intercourse he exerted certainly a wider, and probably a 1826 the Tour through Hawaii,' and in 1828 more effective, influence by his pen." In the Polynesian Researches' were published, and "met with a reception unprecedented

sionary Society' in 1844, and 'Village Lec tures on Popery' in 1847. In 1841 Mr. Ellis took up his residence at Hoddesdon, near Ware, where he assumed the regular pastorate of the Congregationalists, bestirring himself with his usual energy in the erection of a new chapel, and the establishment of various schools and kindred institutions.

The

In 1852 reports reached England, giving a Malagasy government, and under these cirhopeful account of certain changes in the cumstances the London Missionary Society thought it desirable to send an agent to gain authentic information as to the opportunity for re-introducing Christian Missionaries into Madagascar. Mr. Ellis was selected and cheerfully undertook the service, and Mr. Cameron, a former missionary in Madagascar, was associated with him in the mission. history of the restoration of the Church in publications that it need only be briefly alluded Madagascar has been so fully told in recent Visits to Madagascar' in 1858. In 1861 the to. Mr. Ellis published his narrative of 'Three heathen Queen died, and as soon as possible the veteran missionary was again in the field, and the results of his labours may be read in Madagascar Revisited,' and 'The Martyr Church of Madagascar,' besides which works the indefatigable labourer also edited the Malagasy Bible. Dr. Allon with justice says:

alone it is owing that Madagascar is at this "It is not too much to say that to Mr. Ellis moment a free, constitutional, and Protestant country. Christian, in any case, it probably would have become-the seeds of Christianity had been planted and had produced fruit before Mr. Ellis visited the island but his wisdom in the great crisis of transition largely determined what character its Christianity should assume, whether that of simple spiritual truth and freedom, or that of Romish superstition and bondage; what ecclesiastical organization its churches should assume, whether that of self-regulated freedom or that of hierarchical authority; and what should be the relations of the latter to the civil government, whether those of subordination and dependence, Through his counsels and urgencies the churches or those of spiritual and pecuniary independence. of Madagascar have probably been saved from the disastrous history and issue of Established Churches in all nations. Few men in modern times have been called upon to discharge such a mission, few have possessed such a combination of qualifications for it, and few have achieved a success so disinterested and noble. To the Madagascar of future generations William Ellis

will be, only in a far simpler and nobler character, what Augustine was to England, what Boniface was to Germany, what Patrick was to Ireland, with the great distinction that, unlike them, he had forged no chains to bind the Christian ener

a member of the Independent Church, and almost immediately afterwards became an accepted candidate for foreign mission work under the direction of the London Missionary Society. "The gardener's vocation was now to be exchanged for that of the student." He pursued his studies at Gosport, under Dr. Bogue, qualifying for the ministry, little more than four months being allowed for this preparatory work.

"He returned to London to apply himself to the acquisition of some branches of practical knowledge that were justly deemed essential to his efficiency in the field of labour for which he was preparing. The amount of information and

often surpassed in the history of travel." Southey reviewed the Researches in the Quarterly Review. Mr. Ellis also edited an annual advocating the cause of missions to the heathen, The Christian Keepsake.'

entitled

Ellis finally returned to England in 1865, but not to rest upon his laurels; he ignored the fact that he was growing old. was assigned to him, and cheerfully under

"Work

taken, which would have been arduous to most men in the prime of their power." Death overtook him in the midst of his labours, and after a short week's illness he died, on the 9th of June, 1872, in his seventyeighth year, and was quickly followed by his wife, who died on the 16th of the same month.

SIR ARTHUR HELPS may be said to have broken fresh ground in his present work, although it is not the first time that he has occupied himself with a Russian theme. For in his 'Oulita the Serf,' a play founded upon one of Tourguénief's stories, he confined himself to the relations existing between the peasantry and the landholders of Russia; in 'Ivan de Biron' he gives a picture of the Russian Court, and the treatment of its lordly vassals by their imperial rulers. Not a pleasant picture, on the whole, is it that he draws; for the intrigues, of which the comely and sensual Empress Elizabeth was the centre, were by no means exalted or edifying, although he has, to a considerable extent, succeeded in veiling, or at least keeping in the background, their most objectionable features. On the good points in the character of the Empress (whom the English ambassador pronounced to be too stout to be a conspirator) stress is laid; those which do not admit of favourable treatment are left all but unnoticed. With this method of portraitpainting, as applied to a sovereign who had the undoubted merit of loving much, only the sternest critics are likely to find fault; but whether it is admissible in the case of so different a potentate as Johann Ernst Biron (or Biren), Duke of Courland, and patron as well as namesake of the hero of the present tale, is a very different question. If what has generally been said of him heretofore be true, he was one of the worst of men, and his memory as fully deserves to be held in execration as that of the meanest murderer who ever perished ignominiously on the scaffold, and afterwards remained unwhitewashed; but this is a question of more interest to students of history than to devourers of fiction.

The story opens well with a brilliant sketch of the conspiracy by which the Regent Biron was hurled from what was virtually the throne into far distant exile. Then comes a charming description of the life led in Siberia by the young Ivan de Biron, who finds there the heroine of the tale, a Princess Marie, and renews in the lonely village the courtship which he commenced in the capital. A spirited account follows of the revolution, by which the Empress Elizabeth was placed upon the throne, and which, among other results, brought about the recall of Ivan and Marie, and transformed them from almost contented peasants into courtly ornaments, vexed by many troubles, and strangers to such peace of mind as they had known in the tranquil forests in which they had been wont to meet. Then comes a second exile, during which the estranged lovers enter upon a new course of life, passing through a fresh phase of sentiment, and ripening towards the reconciliation which, after a second recall from banishment, finally blends their fortunes. Such is a brief outline of the story, one which would

deserve respectful notice, even if it possessed no other merit than that of being a conscientious attempt to give life and brilliancy to what is, to most English eyes, a dull page of history; but it has many other claims upon the attention and favour of its readers, many other qualifications for deserved success. The studies of character which it contains are numerous, and they are carefully worked out, special pains having evidently been taken with the delinea tion of some of the minor personages, such as the gipsy Azra, or the cynic Nariskoff; but what will render the book specially attractive to the admirers, so many in number, of 'Friends in Council,' is the frequent occurrence of the shrewd observations, and the wise utterances, which give a peculiar charm and value to much that Sir Arthur Helps has written. Of such a nature, for instance, are the remarks in which, enlarging upon the sweetness of the uses of adversity, he points out with gravest irony, how excellent a remedy is afforded by exile for many mental complaints, inasmuch as "there are few things more desirable for a human being than that there should be sudden breaks in the ordinary routine of his existence," and exile affords " one of those breaks in the continuity of life which are often so serviceable to the soul,"—especially as, at the period in which Biron lived, "exile to Siberia was merely a Russian mode of going out of office, and "there are some zealots, perhaps, who, living under constitutional governments, and fondly desiring that those who govern should have more power of government, would not be sorry if there were a Siberia attached to their own country, to which the chiefs of the defeated party might occasionally be sent, instead of being suffered to remain, and thus to form a powerful and vexatious opposition, able to thwart the policy of their successors in office." Captain Morant, R.N., whose newly-married wife was

be some mistake, and that Captain Morant is unacquainted with the writer! It is remarkable that, with the exception of an abortive journey to Malta, neither Mrs. Morant, nor her numerous relations, take any steps to solve this unpleasant mystery until the Captain's return after a two years' cruise, when a little inquiry brings the story of the accident to light. In the meantime, Mrs. Morant resides in her brother's house, and during his absence on the Continent is much consoled by the attentions of a certain Henry Ormonde, a fashionable lady-killer, who very nearly seduces her into matrimonial infidelity, and then finding himself attracted by another face, has the meanness to request her assistance in explaining the terms of their intimacy to her rival. In the end Morant dies, and Ormonde being very properly rejected by Margaret Alwyn, condescends to console the unhappy little Catherine, who has been patient under all the experiments which he has made upon her heart, and is also suffering the pangs of remorse for the inconstancy she displayed to the faithful but deluded sailor. There is not, our readers will conclude, much value in the plot, and there is no attempt in the book at anything which can be called a moral; but the style is not ungraceful, and many of the subordinate characters are well sketched in a superficial sort of way. Lavinia Ogleby is superficial sort of way. blunt and strong-minded, still a woman, of whom we should have liked to have seen more. Mrs. Scudamore, with her airs of diplomacy, Marion Wrexmore, with the unpretentious reality of the same, are clever enough outlines. Of the men, Mr. Alwyn is rather amusing; and a good notion is given of Paul Ogleby, the sensible, energetic family friend, when, on his father and cousin going to Lloyd's to ascertain whether or not he has been drowned at sea, Marion naturally, but forgetfully, exclaims, So provoking! why could not Paul have done it ?"

Mrs. Hooper's novel is emphatically a solid one; it is long and minute, and deals with an enormous multiplicity of characters. It involves the history of four generations, some young people coming to marriageable age in the lifetime of their great-grandfather. We do not say this is impossible, any more than the noble stipend of 1,4007. a year, with which the living of Briarleigh is endowed; but both facts go to show how exceptionally favoured is that interesting town. It is situated, we are glad to notice, in the east of England, a district whose natural beauties are not remarkable, but better deserving of a sacer vates than is often supposed. Of the topography of Briarleigh we are informed with an accuracy which is very unusual in modern novels, and which is one of many indications that there is nothing "scamped" or slipshod in Mrs. Hooper's work. Indeed, she errs, though it is a generous error, in the other direction. She is so resolved on thoroughness; every local detail, every character, however subordinate, is to be so carefully completed, that the moral perspective is a little confused, and there is some difficulty in grasping the leading features of the tale. This defect is most noticeable in the earlier volumes; and the story gains in interest as it approaches its completion. The character of Dr. Baxter, as we follow it from boyhood to his death, is a noble one, and loses nothing in its