travels, illustrations, and details. It is what its title imports, and answers a great many questions that everybody asks. As she journeys she sees everything, and makes us see it too, if it will aid our comprehension of the "domestic life" of the people. Descriptions of well-known places, battles and sieges, fortresses and holy places, are ignored, except when wanted as a background for scenes of real life. But never does the silvery olive, the promegranate with its scarlet flowers, the rich green fig smelling like heliotrope, field of waving grain, opening bud or blooming flower, escape her eye. Her artistic power is such, that with a few strokes of her pen we see it all. We live with her in tents on the hills round about Jerusalem; we visit the young and proud mother of a newly born son at Bethlehem, and think of another mother that there brought forth her first-boru; we drink of the water of the well for which David sighed; we share in the joy of the wedding and the wailing for the dead. So graphic is the narrative without being wearisome. Received as a guest in the families of the country, and careful to never offend the prejudices of the people, harem doors were freely open to her. But the women of Palestine lack those qualities which won for Miss Rogers their admiration. She is unfitted for society. "If we gave them liberty," said an intelligent Moslem, they would not know how to use it. Their heads are made of wood. When you speak, we no longer remember that you are a girl; we think we are listening to a sheikh. Our wives and daughters have neither wisdom nor knowledge. Give them wisdom, and we will give them liberty." Woman is degraded, not because she is woman, but because she lacks "wisdom." Some of the better class are convinced that their civilization depends very much on the position of their women, and they exhibit some anxiety for the education of their daughters. Reform, to be sure and permanent, must lay its foundation in their homes.

We will suggest to the publishers that the next edition be issued with a map.

W.

Politics, Law, aud General Morals. Thoughts on the Future Civil Policy of America. By JOHN WILLIAM DRAPER, M.D., LL.D., Professor of Chemistry and Physiology in the University of New York; author of a "Treatise on Human Physiology," and of a "History of the Intellectual Development of Europe." 12mo., pp. 325. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1865.

In the present volume Dr. Draper does a public service by bringing the results of science to bear upon the present and past conditions and the proper future policy of our country. He analyzes and traces the laws by which the forces of external nature affect the physical systems,

the brains, the minds, and characters of men; he traces the laws with a wide induction through the history of our race, and taking a comprehensive view of our own national position in nature and in history, he deduces the principles which ought to control our future action. Particularly he notes that the long stretch of our territory from north to south, brings under one government two different climates with all their physiological and mental oppositions. The tendency is to a development into two opposing systems, which we might, without much inaccuracy, style the European and Asiatic systems. The South, we may say, has been endeavoring to inaugurate an Asiatic policy on American soil, and we have just closed a typical contest between Europe and Asia, a contest which, when it comes to the fair struggle, can leave no doubt as to which side will obtain the victory. Hence he deduces the patriotic and Christian lesson of mutual consideration of each other's peculiarities and forgiveness of offenses. For the dangerous antagonism between the two sections, Dr. Draper finds the remedies to be two, namely, Education and Intercommunication. Our railroads, which heretofore have run with the parallels of latitude almost exclusively westward, must hereafter, under the demand of increasing intercourse, more usually draw a northern and southern line. In his entire train of thought through his first two chapters, interspersed with various and somewhat irrelevant episodes, Dr. Draper gives us an entertaining lead. Science must control all things. Even faith is blind, and religion becomes superstition without the discriminating guidance of intellect. These two chapters show how the legislation of science must control the legislation both of secular and ecclesiastical policy.

In the third and fourth chapters, Dr. Draper steps out of his own peculiar field, gets out of his depth, and often ceases to command our credence or special respect. Under the pretext of illustrating the power of an Idea, he makes some assaults on religious men, and broaches some demoralizing maxims; for all which, foisted into a work, of professed science, we pay him no special thanks. The power of a national Idea he professes to illustrate from the case of the Messianic Idea among the Jews. That Idea, he tells us, originated in Persia, and was plagiarized by the Jews from Magianism. Now when we remember that Messiah and Christ are in Hebrew and in Greek, respectively, one and the same word, expressing the official character of our Saviour, it follows that the very title of Jesus, as of Christianity, was a theft. When Peter made that wonderful confession, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God," he was simply draping Jesus in a mendacious plagiary; and Jesus, instead of telling Peter that the Spirit of God had taught him to bestow

that title, should have told him he had derived its conception from Zoroaster. Now men who are not pretenders, like Dr. Draper, in Hebrew history and literature, do suppose that this Messianic idea originated with Jehovah himself in the Garden of Eden. They trace it from an age far earlier than Zoroaster, through the sacred record down to the time of the captivity. How does Dr. Draper know that the Jew took it from the Magian, rather than the Magian from the Jew? He indeed asserts, as magisterially as if it were unquestioned historic truth, that the old Testament is not authentic; having an oriental and a comparatively modern, not a Palestinian or an ancient origin. Of course with a skepticism so sweeping, he can affirm that the doctrine of Satan and Angels is of Magian origin. That Satan is mentioned in the Book of Job, in Psalms, and in Chronicles; that Belial is mentioned in Samuel, Judges, and Deuteronomy; that the great tempter of mankind intrudes into Eden itself, are all facts that weigh nothing. Equally unimportant are the various appearances of the "Angel of the Lord" through the earlier books of the old Testament. A skepticism that destroys the validity of the whole, and renders Christ an impostor, settles with Dr. Draper the question. That Dr. Draper should through several pages of his work charge religious men with opposition to science, is not surprising, however false. To such science as this, or rather to such blank infidelity, interpolated with a very questionable ingenuousness in a book professedly of pure science, we are, indeed, opposed. We question not Dr. Draper's right to write any kind of a book he pleases; but we claim an equal right to expose its character, and warn the Christian public against its insidious character.

Dr. Draper institutes a contrast between the English and American systems of government, denominating the former a government through morals, and the latter through intelligence, and shows the superiority of the latter to the former. Hence we have the maxim that government through morals is bad. That there is some truth in Dr. Draper's subordinate statements on this subject we cheerfully admit; but why should he give the general doctrine that demoralizing form? There is truly as much government by moral means, in free Protestant America, and especially in New England, as in any country on the globe. Terrible is the destiny, and reprobate is the character, of that being who has intelligence without morals. It forms our idea of Satan, even though it be the Idea which, perhaps, Dr. Draper worships.

We conclude with one passage showing the pruriency with which Dr. Draper itches to attack in this scientific work the authenticity of the miraculous history of the sacred records. He is discussing the subject of "divination, agromancy, pyromancy, hydromancy, chiro

mancy, augury, interpreting of dreams, oracles, sorcery, astrology," and concludes with the following sweeping remark:

These delusions have vanished, together with the night to which they appertained, yet they were the delusions of fifteen hundred years. In their support might be produced a greater mass of human testimony than probably could be brought to bear on any other matter of belief in the entire history of man; and yet in the nineteenth century we have come to the conclusion that the whole, from the beginning to the end, was a deception. Let him, therefore, who is disposed to balance the testimony of past ages against the dictates of his own reason ponder on this strange history. Let him who relies on the authority of human evidence in the guidance of his opinions, now settle with himself what that evidence is worth.-Pp. 293-4.

Slavery and Southern Methodism. Two Sermons preached in the Methodist Church in Newman, Georgia. By the Pastor, Rev. JOHN H. CALDWELL, A.M., of the Georgia Conference. 12mo., pp. 80. Printed for the Author. 1865.

Mr. Caldwell's sermons deserve a wide circulation North, and a universal tract-distribution through the South. That such bold antislavery truth should be uttered in Central Georgia, is part of a revolution which will never go back. The excitement produced in the congregation, the starting up of divers indignant individuals walking with noisy steps out of the Church, the previous denunciations of the preacher as an "ultra abolitionist," are nothing more than would have been quite as fiercely performed in the most fashionable Methodist Churches of New York city in 1860, by persons ready now to make affidavit that they were "always good antislavery men." Nay, one of our New York papers quotes the exclamation of a foreign visitor here: "And these people, even now, use the term abolitionist as a reproach!" So that all such excitements are no token that Mr. Caldwell's ultimate triumph is uncertain.

Mr. Caldwell's fundamental doctrine is, that slavery is in itself right, but that in the South it has been overladen with enormous abuses; and under this head of abuses he reads a lecture of scathing power to the southern supporters of slavery. We precisely reverse his maxim. We hold slavery to be in itself a wickedness; but that compulsory circumstances may excuse the slaveholder, who does his best both to benefit his slaves and to abolish the system. On this ground we hold that many a Christian slaveholder may have been exculpated from all blame, both for holding his slaves and for the existence of the system. Mr. Caldwell's sermons unfold a sorrowful tale however, and we trust they are the beginning of a moral revolution of feeling which will result in the full conversion of our Southern brethren to the Gospel of truth and freedom.、

We would hereby urge upon our Church the immense importance of the immediate establishment of free Methodist periodicals in the

South. For one of these, Charleston might be the place, and Mr. Caldwell the man. For another, beyond all question the most suitable point is Nashville. Free discussion once established can never be destroyed or resisted.

Belles-Lettres, Classical and Philological.

Phrasis: A Treatise on the History and Structure of the Different Languages of the World, with a Comparative View of the Forms of their Words, and the Style of their Expressions; with Photograph of the Author. By J. WILSON, A.M., Author of "Errors of Grammar and Nature of Language." 8vo., pp. 384. Albany: J. Munsell. 1864. America has not yet produced a genuine original treatise upon comparative philology. Such a work could not have been expected of us hitherto; it demands a breadth and depth of research, years of leisurely, scholarly toil, such as little comports with the leading characteristics of the American mind. Our early training does not fit us specially for such pursuits; and while there is little in our atmosphere to foster any tendency to patient, pains-taking philological investigation, the enthusiastic student finds little encouragement from books or instructors. The English Grammar even is yet to be written in our own language. The student who would make scientific investigation into the structure and genius of our language must go to school to Rast, Bopp, and the Grimms. The unassuming but suggestive and stimulating little books of Trench, the Lectures of Max Müller and of Marsh, have done much to direct the attention of the studious and thoughtful to this rich and promising field. But the book before us aims to give, in the compass of 384 pages, an outline of comparative philology at once popular and scientific. We need not say that such an attempt would be most hazardous, even if essayed by the ripest scholarship and most experienced authorship, enjoying the facilities of the richest libraries of the old World; and if this be true, it is no disparagement to intimate that Mr. Wilson's PHRASIS is not a perfect success. He aims to teach comparative philology to a student who reads only his mother tongue; in the slightly stilted language of the preface, to write a "work which shall be simple and plain enough for anybody to read, and yet thorough and philosophical enough for even the experienced philologist to study with advantage." The consequence of this impracticable attempt is a book adapted neither to the common reader nor the scholar. The former will never penetrate its bristling forests of foreign words, and the latter will not care to review the elements of English Grammar.

The book has a pretentious air that at the outset produces an