des Abencerages; Memoires d'Outre Tombe, a voluminous, posthumous autobiography. There are a number of other works, including political treatises. Alison says, that "he is, without one single exception, the most eloquent writer of the present age," which high eulogy most persons will think extravagant.

We make two or three extracts to show the peculiar genius of Chateaubriand. We dwell on them with more pleasure as they remind us of what we used to hear, in our boyhood, of the classics of the past generation. We recall the eloquent eulogies of lips long silent in the grave to which we listened with so much eagerness. We take a paragraph from the eulogy on Bossuet:

We were for some time of opinion that the funeral oration on the Prince of Conde, with the exception of the incomparable passage with which it concludes, had generally been too highly extolled. We considered it more easy, as it really is, to reach the form of eloquence which appears in the exordium of that eulogy than that in the oration on the Princess Henrietta. But when we re-perused that discourse with attention,-when we beheld the orator blowing the epic trumpet during one half of his narrative, and, as it were, sounding an Homeric strain,-when, retiring to Chantilly, he resumes the Christian tone, and recovers all the grand and solemn ideas with which the above-mentioned funeral orations are replete -when, after having followed Condé to the coffin, he summons nations, princes, prelates, and warriors, around the cenotaph of the hero,—when, finally, advancing with his hoary locks, like a majestic spirit of another world, he exhibits Bossuet declining to the tomb, and the age of Louis XIV. (whose obsequies you would almost conceive him to be celebrating) on the brink of eternity,-at this utmost effort of human eloquence tears of admiration flowed from our eyes and the book dropped from our hands.

Chateaubriand excels in the picturesque :

At Palmyra the date-tree cleaves the heads of the men and the lions which support the capitals of the Temple of the Sun: the palm, with its column, supplies the place of the broken pillar, and the peach-tree, consecrated by the ancients to Harpocrates, flourishes in the abode of silence. Here, too, you see a different kind of trees, which by their dishevelled foliage and fruit hanging in crystals, harmonize admirably with the pendent ruins. A caravan, halting in these deserts, heightens their picturesque effects. The dignity of the criental dress accords with the dignity of these ruins, and the camels seem to swell their dimensions, when, reposing between fragments of masonry, they exhibit only their russet heads and their protuberant backs.

The vale of Tempe, the woods of Olympus, the hills of Attica and of the Peloponnesus, are everywhere bestrewed with the ruins of Greece. There the mosses, the creeping plants, and the rock-flowers, flourish in abundance. A flaunting garland of jessamine entwines an antique Venus, as if to replace her cestus; a beard of white moss hangs from the chin of Hebe; the poppy shoots up on the leaves of the book of Mnemosyne, a lovely emblem of the past renown and the present oblivion of these regions. The waves of the Egean Sea, which only advance to subside beneath crumbling porticos; Philomela chanting her plaintive notes; Alcyon heaving his sighs; Cadmus rolling his rings around an altar; the swan building her nest in the lap of a Leda,-all these accidents, pro

duced, as it were, by the Graces, pour a magic spell over these poetic ruins. You would say that a divine breath yet animates the dust of the temples of Apollo and the Muses, and the whole landscape bathed in the sea resembles a beautiful picture of Apelles, consecrated to Neptune and suspended over his shores.

Under a cloudy sky, amid wind and storm, on the coast of that sea whose tempests were sung by Ossian, their Gothic architecture has something grand and sombre, like the God of Sinai of whom they remind you. Seated on a shattered altar in the Orkneys, the traveller is astonished at the dreariness of those places: a raging sea, sudden fogs, vales where rises the sepulchral stone, streams flowing through wild heaths, a few reddish pine-trees scattered over a naked desert studded with patches of snow, such are the only objects which present themselves to his view. The wind circulates among the ruins, and their innumerable crevices are so many tubes which heave a thousand sighs. The organ of old did not lament so much in these religious edifices. Long grasses wave in the apertures of the domes, and beyond these apertures you behold the flitting clouds and the soaring sea-eagle. Sometimes, mistaking her course, a ship, hidden by her swelling sails, like a spirit of the waters curtained by his wings, ploughs the black bosom of ocean. Bending under the northern blast, she seems to bow as she advances, and to kiss the seas that wash the relics of the temple of God.

VI. Baptism in a Nutshell: the proper Subjects and the proper Mode. By the Rev. Daniel Baker, D. D., President of Austin College, Texas. Philadelphia: W. S. & A. Martien. 1857. pp. 80.

A very excellent little Manual. The established arguments for infant baptism and for affusion as the best mode, are here well and clearly set forth. They are unanswerable. Nothing has ever seemed to us more strange than the opposition of Christian men to infant baptism, and the childish stickling of wise men for a particular quantity of water to perform a symbolic rite.

VII. The Bible in the Work-shop; or Christianity the Friend of Labor By the Rev. John W. Mears. New York: C. Scribner. 1857. pp. 344.

We are very much pleased with the idea of this book, and to a considerable extent, with its execution. It touches upon almost everything that enters into the question of the relation of Christianity to labor. It gives the working man his true place; there is no false sentiment; no attempt at condescension; and, on the other hand, no mere talk for effect and popularity about the "bone and sinew of the land," such as we hear before an election. Labor is shown to be necessary to true development; not only honorable but indispensable to all men; and the value of mechanical labor, and its admirable ingenuity in our times, is well set forth. The history of the workingman is given, and it is shown how Christianity has elevated him from the position occupied under all false religions, until in America he, for the first time, has his true position. The value of the

Sabbath is shown; the false friend of working men is exposed, and it is shown that of all men, he who earns his bread by the sweat of his brow, owes most to the religion promulgated by Him who, on earth, worked with his own hands at a mechanical trade. Christianity, the religion of the masses, is thus commended especially to the workingman. The book is very gracefully dedicated to our friend Mr. Birkinbine, the machinist.

There is a fine cheerful spirit breathing through the book. Mr. Mears does not think it necessary to condole with the laborer. He treats him rather in the spirit of Longfellow's Village Blacksmith. He respects his strength and vigor, and thinks he ought to magnify his office. We like the spirit of the following, which we quote as a sample of a book which we gladly commend for its own sake, as well as for the sake of the author:

Much has been written within the past ten or fifteen years of the operative classes of Europe. Unquestionably the mining and manufacturing population, the poorer classes of tenants, and the humbler craftsmen in the large cities of Great Britain and the Continent, have labored under personal and social disadvantages, anything but creditable to the present advanced stage of Christian civilization. The excessive protracting of labor, the tender age at which toil was commenced, the excessive and degrading duty required of women and children, the unwholesomeness of their pursuits, the difficulty of barely supporting life upon the scanty income; these were features which, until recently, almost characterized the condition of the mass of European laborers. That the laborer should never rise above these disadvantages is, doubtless, in many instances, his own fault; the result of his idleness, recklessness, evil habits, sin. That he should be poor and kept closely employed, is not necessarily injurious to his nature and prospects as a moral being. Yet deducting whatever cannot be fairly charged to present social arrangements, unquestionably, in Christian countries, there is much of misery yet remaining in the workingman's condition which we might have expected Christianity to remove. Hence we have had formidable expressions of discontent among the working classes. They have been prominent in recent political disturbances in Europe; and have themselves instigated some of the most desperate and extensive revolutions in the hope of improving their condition. But, it is to be noted, that these movements have been most violent, and the necessity which prompted them most urgent, in communities least acquainted with Christianity, and least affected by its wholesome influences. Nor is it without significance, that in heathen countries, the crushing weight of ancient hereditary distinctions, prevents the conception of even such a remedy in the minds of the oppressed classes. It is something that the desperate remedy of a revolution is available, and that the social system, in the most imperfectly Christianized countries, is not petrified beyond any hope of improvement, even though popular tumults are necessary to secure it.

But such remedies have not, to any great extent, been found necessary in Great Britain. Strikes, combinations, chartist mobs, etc., there have been, but no revolution, nor a formidable movement for one. Attention has indeed been directed to the subject by these outbreaks, but it has only been necessary for Christian philanthropy to be made aware of the startling facts of which she had been in ignorance before, in order to rouse her to such activity as already has largely diminished the evils complained of. Even in the condition of these operatives connected with the great manufacturing establishments of England, we can see evidences of the benign

influences of Christianity generally, and of these recent efforts in particular. Legislation has interposed to reglate the hours of labor, especially in the case of young persons. The complaint of the poet Wordsworth, no less than the motive power to which he refers, has become well-nigh obsolete:

Where the rumbling stream,

That turns the multitude of dizzy wheels,

Glares, like a troubled spirit, in its bed

Among the rocks below. Men, Maidens, Youths,
Mother and little children, Boys and Girls

Enter, and each the wonted task resumes

Within this temple, where is offered up

To Gain-the master Idol of this Realm-
Perpetual sacrifice.

Visitors tell us that the Manchester cotton operatives at work have very little of that woe-begone, slave-gang appearance, frequently ascribed to them. The amount of physical labor demanded of them is really very trifling. Their movements are quick and easy, and there is no sign of weariness or languor, either in face or limbs. There can be no doubt that factory life does not tend to develop the frame in all its robustness, but neither does it seriously keep down the energies, nor necessarily shorten life. Ventilating apparatus is every year becoming more studied in mill architecture. Hardly a new mill arises which does not boast some improvement in this way over its predecessors, so that, in nine establishments out of ten, the air is clear of noxious intermixtures.* A recent British reviewer remarks upon the extraordinary number of ruddy-faced, healthy-looking, young children to be met with in the streets of Manchester. More than thirty years ago, it was boasted that "in England the workmen in manufactories are generally eager to discharge their duties attentively, in hopes either of mental improvement or of augmented wages. Among them are to be found many whose scientific knowledge is by no means despicable, and whose practical experience renders them capable of suggesting most useful inventions. There is the greatest desire to obtain distinction, and the workmen conceive their own character, as well as that of their master, implicated, if they do not endeavor to excel, not only all foreign rivals, but also their own national competitors. The wish of many of the laboring mechanics of England is to be able to set up in business for themselves, and in order to fulfill this wish they must first acquire a high character as workmen." At the present day it is said that many of the Manchester mill-owners have been originally millhands. Among the favorite recreations of the operatives, themselves, are botanizing, and the study of zoology, and entomology. The people have a peculiar taste for the former pursuit, and collections of plants and herbals, arranged with no mean skill, are very often to be found among the most prized articles of the household. There are botanists among them, equally familiar with the Linnean or the Natural System, who know the name and habitat of every plant within a day's walk from their dwellings.?

In all these pleasing features of the life and condition of the cotton-factory operative, we see the result of influences communicated to modern civilization by Christianity, for the full development of which we need only turn to the elevated and untrammelled condition of the Industrial Classes of America. Of them we need only say that a fair degree of comfort and respectability is the birthright of almost every one, while the road to eminence, to great usefulness, and to wealth, is seriously obstructed

to none.

Chambers's Tract, "The Cotton Metropolis."
Quart. Rev. 1821.

† N. Brit. Rev., No. 47. Chambers' " Cotton Metropolis."

Hugh Miller, reviewing the fifteen years of his experience as a workingman, declares that "he enjoyed in those years fully the average amount of happiness. Let me add-for it seems to be very much the fashion of the time to draw dolorous pictures of the condition of the laboring classes→→ that from the close of the first year in which I wrought as journeyman, up till I took final leave of the mallet and chisel, I never knew what it was to want a shilling; that my two uncles, my grandfather, and the mason with whom I served my apprenticeship-all workingmen-had had a similar experience, and that it was the experience of my father also. I cannot doubt that deserving mechanics may, in exceptional cases, be exposed to want; but I can as little doubt that the cases are exceptionable, and that much of the suffering of the class is a consequence either of improvidence on the part of the competently skilled, or of a course of trifling during the term of apprenticeship, that always lands those who indulge in it in the hapless position of the inferior workman.'

VIII. The last of the Patriarchs; or, Lessons chiefly from the Life of Joseph. By the Rev. John Cumming, D. D. Philadelphia: Lindsay & Blakiston. 1856. pp. 310.

Dr. Cumming's style is well-known. Without any special profundity or originality he is very popular. It is not very easy to understand the sources of his popularity, but we may be permitted to rejoice at it, because of the excellent evangelical spirit of his works.

IX. The Autobiography of a Blind Minister; including Sketches of the Men and Events of his Time. By Timothy Woodbridge, D. D. Boston: Jewett & Co. Philadelphia : Lindsay & Blakiston. 1856. pp. 312.

We like the resolute spirit of Dr. Woodbridge's Introduction: "My life has been peculiar, and may afford some useful lessons to others, particularly to young men, who will learn that adverse events, to which they are all exposed, need not subdue them. Difficulties encountered with cheerful resolution are generally overcome; and the history of every resolute man proves the truth of Bolingbroke's remark, that trophies of glory are often built upon what the world considers our own ruins.'

"The loss of my sight, at an early period of life, seemed to others to cast a deep cloud over my prospects-to throw up a frowning barrier which I could not pass. But it did not seem so to me, nor did I find it so. Even after this apparently unpropitious event, I determined to practice law, and prosecuted its studies with glowing prospects. But I was diverted from this design by causes the reader will find unfolded in the ensuing narrative. I became a minister of the Gospel, and have pursued this avocation with unmitigated earnestness through life.”

Dr. Woodbridge is a grandson of Jonathan Edwards. He is also descended from John Woodbridge, one of the ejected ministers in 1662, who was appointed with Richard Baxter to sustain their cause in the confer

* Autobiography, p. 486, Am. Ed.