graphical data (given in the Bible,) can all be found united more perfectly than they are here.' This is Ritter's opinion. Tischendorf (I., 232,) says: "This Wady (the plain) of Sebayeh has been regarded, and not without reason, as the spot on which the children of Israel were encamped during the Mosaic legislation. It is of considerable extent, and looks as if it had been made for some such festival as this. It also enables us to understand the expression employed by Moses, Whosoever touches this mountain.' In the Wady Sebayeh the mountain may literally be touched; for it rises so precipitously, that it stands before your eyes a distinct object from the foot to the summit, evidently detached from every thing around. The same remark applies to the words, 'And the people came up to the foot of the mountain.' It is very rarely possible to see the summit of a mountain, and yet stand so near the foot as you can here.' At the same time Tischendorf discovers difficulties which make it almost more advisable to adhere to Robinson's views: first, because there is not a good road direct to the summit from the plain of Sebayeh; again, because the way by which the Israelites must have gone from the Sheikh valley to the foot of the mountain would be 'too narrow and difficult;' and lastly, because the words, 'Moses led the people out of the camp to meet God, and they came to the foot of the mountain,' seem to imply that there was a considerable distance between the mountain and the camp.' But there is no ground for the assumptions from which these difficulties arise. The plain of Sebayeh was not the place in which the people encamped, and also that in which they went out of the camp to the foot of the mountain to receive the law. It only answered the latter purpose. The head-quarters of the encampment were, without doubt, in the plain of er-Rahah and the Wady es-Sheikh. From this spot Moses conducted the people out of the camp, through the broad, though short, Wady es-Sebayeh, into the plain of es-Sebayeh, to the foot of the Jebel Musa, to meet with God; a distance which the Englishman who accompanied Strauss and Krofft was able to accomplish, with fast walking, in three quarters of an hour. The people were collected together in this broad plain, which surrounds the steep, rocky cliff of the Jebel Musa like an amphitheatre. On account of the precipitous character of the mountain, even the front ranks could see every thing that passed at the top of the mountain; and as the plain itself rises gradually toward the South, and therefore every row stood on somewhat higher ground than the one before it, there was nothing to prevent the hindermost ranks from seeing clearly the summit of the mountain. Moreover, as the mountains which bound the plain on the South are neither steep nor lofty, a considerable number of people could take their stand upon the mountains, if there was not sufficient room in the plain. When the people, overpowered by the sublime spectacle attendant upon the giving of the law, were seized with a panic and rushed away from the spot, they ran through the Wady Sabayeh, and hurried back to their tents in the valleys and openings of Sheikh and Rahah, from which they were no longer able to see what was taking place on the Jebel Musa, as the steep cliff of Ras es-Sufsâfeh stood between. Wady es-Sabayeh is very short, and from two to four hundred paces broad.

We conclude with an extract from Graul. He says, (II., 260) 'I am not the man to take up the cause of monastic traditions, and least of all, those of Sinai, which rest, as traditions, upon very feeble foundations. But I cannot, and do not wish to conceal the fact, that of all the spots in the peninsula which I have visited, not one has seemed to me to harmonize so completely with the Biblical account of the giving of the law, as the Jebel Musa and its neighborhood. At the same time, I must candidly confess that I visited the Jebel Musa with a decided prejudice in favor of the hypothesis of Lepsius.'

XIV. THE STUDENT'S HUME. A History of England, from the Earliest Times to the Revolution in 1688. By DAVID HUME. Abridged. Incorporating the Corrections and Researches of recent Historians, and continued down to the year 1858. Illustrated by Engravings on Wood. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1859. pp. 789.

We take the following from the preface. After very properly praising the admirable style of Hume, it is added: "It is not intended, however, to ignore or extenuate Hume's defects. The editor of the present work has carefully compared the historian's statements with the best and most recent authorities, retaining his language as far as practicable, but at the same time introducing into the text numerous corrections and additions. Hume's political principles, as is well known, led him to uphold the royal prerogative against the popular element in our Constitution; and this view may be observed, not only in the coloring of his narrative and the tone of his reasonings, but occasionally, also, it must be added, in an unfair use of his authorities. With the view apparently of exculpating Charles I., the great hero of his work, in the maintenance of those principles which cost him his crown and his life, the historian has been led to represent the royal prerogative under the Plantagenets and Tudors as greater and more absolute than the facts will justify. These views it has been the duty of the present editor to modify and correct from later and more unprejudiced writers."

The illustrations are particularly good, and many of them interesting.

XV. IDYLS OF THE KING. By ALFRED TENNYSON, D. C. L., Poet Laureate. 1859. pp. 227.

Mr. Tennyson has a passion for King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. The legends are extremely beautiful, and with his fine taste and musical verse he makes the most of them. These four Idyls are, Enid, Vivien, Elaine, and Guinevere. We will give our readers an idea of Mr. Tennyson's treatment by an extract or two. The moral is high and pure. One of the stories is of the Lady of Shalott and Lancelot, from which we take the following:

As when a painter, poring on a face,

Divinely through all hind'rance finds the man
Behind it, and so paints him that his face,
The shape and color of a mind and life,
Lives for his children, ever at its best
And fullest; so the face before her lived,
Dark-splendid, speaking in the silence, full
Of subtle things, and held her from her sleep.

There to his proud horse Lancelot turned, and smoothed
The glossy shoulder, humming to himself.

Half envious of the flattering hand, she drew

Nearer and stood. He looked, and more amazed

Then if seven men had set upon him, saw

The maiden standing in the dewy light.

He had not dreamed she was so beautiful.
Then came on him a sort of sacred fear,
For silent, though he greeted her, she stood
'Rapt on his face, as if it were a god's.

Whereat Lavaine said, laughing, "Lily maid,
For fear our people call you lily maid
In earnest, let me bring your color back;"
So kissed her, and Sir Lancelot his own hand,
And thus they moved away; she stayed a minute,
Then made a sudden step to the gate, and there-
Her bright hair blown about the serious face
Yet rosy-kindled with her brother's kiss-
Paused in the gateway, standing by the shield
In silence, while she watched their arms far off
Sparkle, until they dipp'd below the downs.

From the story of Enid, we take the following:
Then rode Geraint into the castle court,
His charger trampling many a prickly star
Of sprouted thistle on the broken stones.
He looked, and saw that all was ruinous.
Here, stood a shattered archway plumed with fern;
And here had fallen a great part of a tower,
Whole, like a crag that tumbles from a cliff,
And like a crag, was gay with wilding flowers;
And high above a piece of turret stair,
Worn by the feet that now were silent, wound

i

Bare to the sun, and monstrous ivy stems

Claspt the gray walls with hairy-fibred arms,
And sucked the joining of the stones, and looked
A knot, beneath, of snakes, aloft, a grove.

And while he waited in the castle court,
The voice of Enid, Yniol's daughter, rang
Clear through the open casement of the hall,
Singing; and as the sweet voice of a bird,
Heard by the lander in a lonely isle,
Moves him to think what kind of bird it is
That sings so delicately clear, and make
Conjecture of the plumage and the form;
So the sweet voice of Enid moved Geraint;
And made him like a man abroad at morn,
When first the liquid note beloved of men,
Comes flying over many a windy wave
To Britain, and in April suddenly

Breaks from a coppice gemmed with green and red,
And he suspends his converse with a friend,
Or it may be the labor of his hands,

To think or say, "There is the nightingale;"
So fared it with Geraint, who thought and said,

"Here, by God's grace, is the one voice for me."

XVI. THE NEW AMERICAN CYCLOPÆDIA. A Popular Dictionary of General Knowledge. Edited by George Ripley and Charles A. Dana. Volume VIII. Fugger-Haynau. New York: D. Appleton & Co. For sale in Philadelphia by J. M'Farlan, Agent. 1859. pp. 788.

We have spoken repeatedly in high terms of this important work. It has occurred to us that those who have not had an opportunity to examine it, might like to see a specimen of its manner, and we have accordingly selected a short Article, as a brick of the house.

GOLDEN FLEECE, ORDER OF THE (Span. el toyson de oro; Fr. ordre de la toison d'or,) one of the oldest and most important of the order of chivalry, founded at Bruges by Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, on occasion of his marriage with the Princess Isabella of Portugal, Jan. 10, 1430, and consecrated to the Virgin Mary and the apostle Andrew. The statutes of the order declare that it takes its name from the golden fleece which the Argonauts went in search of. The decoration of the grand master is a chain composed of alternate flints and rays of steel with

the golden fleece fastened in the middle. The Knights wear a golden fleece on a red ribbon. Its design was to maintain the honor of knighthood and protect the church, and it was sanctioned by Pope Eugenius IV. in 1433, and by Leo X. in 1516. An article of the statutes (published at Lille, Nov. 30, 1431, in the French language,) ordained that if the house of Burgundy should become extinct in the male line, the husband of the daughter, and heir of the last lord, should be grand master of the order. After the death of Charles the Bold, (1477) the husband of his daughter and heir, Mary, Maximilian I., of Austria, therefore, inherited the grand mastership. During the war of the Spanish succession, Charles III. (afterward the Emperor Charles VI.) and Philip V., the contestants for the throne of Spain, both claimed this dignity. When the former left Spain, he carried the archives of the order with him, and in 1713 celebrated its revival in Vienna. Spain protested against this at the Congress of Cambrai in 1721, and it was decided by the treaty of Vienna, in 1725, that the regents of both States should be permitted to confer the order with similar insignia, but that the members should be distinguished as knights of the Spanish or Austrian golden fleece. After the death of Charles VI., Maria Theresa, in 1741, bestowed the office of grand master upon her husband, Francis I., against which Philip V., of Spain, protested in the electoral assembly at Vienna and at Frankfort.

At the peace of Aix la Chapelle, in 1748, France, England and Holland, demanded that the schism should be composed; but as Ferdinand VI., of Spain, declared that the order was inseparable from the Spanish crown, the dispute remained unreconciled, and the order continues in two branches, neither of which recognises the other. The statutes ordain that the knights shall recognise no other jurisdiction but an assembly of their order under the presidency of the grand master, or of a knight authorized by him, and that they shall have precedency of all persons except those of royal blood. The number of knights, originally 24, was soon increased to 31, and in 1516 to 52. In 1851, the order consisted, in Austria, of 6 grand crosses, 20 commanders, and 161 knights. See Reiffenberg, Histoire de l'ordre de la toisin d'or (Brussels, 1830.)

XVII.

THE PROTESTANT THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL CYCLOPÆDIA; being a condensed translation of Herzog's Real Encyclopædia. With additions from other sources. By Rev. J. H. A. Bоmberger, D. D., assisted by distinguished theologians of various denominations. Parts IX. & X.

These numbers carry the Encyclopædia from "Ezra" to "Heliodorus." Almost everything that bears even any relation to theology, is discussed, and in a very interesting manner. We have, heretofore, highly commended this work; we now say that to every theologian, it is indispensable. No minister will, in future, claim to be fully informed without it.