The Per

and has endeared itself to the heart of Christendom. sian Scriptures come next. Some of them are fine. They are not very ancient. We see from the allusions to Mecca, the Prophet," etc., that they are under the reflex influence of Christianity through Mohammedanism. The Hindu Scriptures do not appear to be much more ancient, as allusion in them is made to pilgrimages to the Holy City, and their general air is modern; that is, we should say they were written five or six hundred years after Christ. They are, however, noble and broad in spirit, and superior to the fragmentary Vedic utterances in positive religious belief.

The Buddhist selections seem more ancient. Some of them evince a very high and delicate conception of immortality and true religion. As, for instance, these passages:

As kindred, friends, and dear ones salute him who hath travelled far and returned home safe, so will good deeds welcome him who goes from this world and enters another.

Never will I seek or receive private individual salvation; never will I enter into final peace alone: but forever and ever, and everywhere, I will live and strive for universal redemption of every creature throughout all the world.

The Chinese aphorisms are sententious, as we usually find them. We have next the Grecian and Roman selections, being extracts from Plato, Plutarch, Epictetus; and, then, the book closes with a few quotations from the Arabic.

The volume contains a series of prefaces and explanations, which, although interesting to the scholar, are likely to excite the crude thinker, turn him away from his devotional frame, and perhaps frighten him from the book. So also we should say of the notes affixed to the chapters here and there that, although the compiler has inserted them from good motives,— that is, in order to account for what he has left out of or retained in the New Testament narratives,- he is really under no obligations to explain, as his book only professes to be selections; and he has therefore a right to reject or insert what he pleases.

As we understand, this book has been prepared for devotional purposes and edification. Whatever, therefore, has a tendency to over-stimulate the speculative faculties mars the fine harmony of spirit with which all Christian believers and free religionists might read these contributions from the religious mind of the world.

We have found pleasure in the book, and think it will meet the wants of many persons. We, as a Church, are indebted to the compiler for the zeal and perseverance with which he has carried out his work.

Mr. E. F. Hayward's Patrice: Her Love and Work. This poem, published by Cupples, Upham & Co., is the story in verse of a man who passed through painful scenes of love, disappointment, jealousy, and failure in life, and at last found his good angel who redeemed him. We cannot say that the tale fixes itself upon our attention. If it were told in a sensational newspaper, with all the usual accompaniments, it might arouse the young reader; but it is not original, and it is the production of a refined and cultivated writer, who tones down his despairing scenes to careful verse. Moreover, the leading character is somewhat morbid and unnatural, and the lines are often in their construction involved and obscure.

Having said this much in criticism, we will now add that the poem seems to us to show a mind of fine culture, good command of language, and rhythmic power. The writer never has a rough line, never a common one. At the same time, he is not stilted in his style, but talking of plain things. His thought is simple, poetic, and true; but his construction is often, as we have said before, blind, and involved by the misplacement of words,-a fault which we have to pardon in Milton or Browning, but do not however like even in them.

Mr. Hayward's language is always elevated, and he has many lines in his poem quite perfect in their flow and thought. Some sustained passages have real grace and beauty. Here is a

passage:

"Patrice kept evening quiet when he came,
Cooling the fever of the day's unrest
With wise and tender words; and even urged,
When effort pressed his mind too heavily,

The yielding of his quest. To worthy man,
Worth is not long denied; and work will come.'

'See,' she said,

'How all things work him good who loves the good!

And man is beggared, so he will not sport

Or work as bees and blackbirds in the sun.'"

If the author should become conscious of this fault of obscurity in style, and should select cheerful moral or natural scenes without passion or gloom, we see nothing to prevent his rising to a fine position as a poet, who may sing the cares of men away or prompt them to more noble living.

NEW MEMOIRS.

An interesting book has appeared this autumn in London, called Memoirs of Seventy Years, by one of a Literary Family, edited by Mrs. Herbert Martin. Mrs. Martin is a charming story-writer, who prepares with care these reminiscences of her venerable mother, Mrs. Philip Le Breton, of Hampstead, who was the grand-daughter of Dr. Aikin and grand-niece of Mrs. Barbauld. She was the editor of Dr. Channing's correspondence with Lucy Aikin, and also wrote the Life of Mrs. Barbauld. We shall hope to see a reprint of the book in this country.

SERMONS.

The little volume published in London, called Sermons of Sympathy, sent us by Mr. Hopps, is a choice one. The sermons are short, simple, earnest, and affecting. We like the first sermon on "I will fear no evil, for thou art with me," and also the one called "A Brother's Resurrection." But it would be hard to choose from them, as they all come directly to the soul in its best moods, and lift it to higher levels. The book contains a portrait of Mr. Hopps, which his friends on this side the water will be glad to recognize.

The Autobiography of Anthony Trollope we should judge to be a very interesting book from the notices that have appeared. There is such an intense realism and want of grace about some of the revelations of his youth that few persons would care to publish them; as, for instance, when Mr. Trollope flogs a boy at school till he has to "go home to get cured," and wears "dirty clothes" through his boyhood in his gloomy home.

CORRESPONDENCE.

We give below some extracts from an informal letter written to us by a lady in Ithaca, whose son is a professor in the university. She has not long been there, and these are some of

her first impressions of Unitarian work in that community. She will pardon us, we trust, for quoting from a private letter:

I know but little about this Unitarian church in Ithaca. I have a friend who has been here from the beginning, and who was one of its first movers. At the time, or rather before Dr. Stebbins was sent here, she and another devoted Unitarian lady went to a conference at Canastota on purpose to meet your husband, then at the head of the Associa tion, and lay the case before him, having all faith in his power to appreciate and help. They were not disappointed. He heard and understood the situation. Dr. Stebbins was sent. You know, I presume, what he did, what good success he had. . . . Your husband's "memory is kept green" by all those who met him, or who reaped the fruit of what he sowed in the choice of the man whom he sent. . . .

There are a few earnest laymen, but you could count them up on your fingers, who are interested and devoted. Some of these and I have in my mind now two families - were not educated Unitarians, but Quakers. They are most excellent people, one of the men a professor, the other a doctor from Lynn, Mass. They do all they can. A few others help, but it is somewhat up-hill work. . . . In short there is a great dearth of material here.

On the hill—that is, among the university people — there are three or four professors who themselves go to the Unitarian church in winter. They have seats there, and help what they feel they can. But professors here are not rich, their salaries are not large; and living pretty much exhausts their incomes. Besides, it is too far for their families to walk, and the way is a hard one at best,- a descent of some three hundred and fifty or four hundred feet, the distance a mile, or nearly that. When it is snowy or icy, it is not safe for women to venture; and there is no public conveyance on Sundays.

snow.

Last Sunday, for instance, I had planned to go down. I thought by walking in the middle of the street, avoiding the slippery sidewalks, I could get on comfortably. But, while we were at breakfast, it began to Over this light snow, with ice more or less underneath, I did not dare to venture. So I spent the hour at home reading a little volume of Fénelon. . . . It is good for us to meet together to have prayer and singing and all the rest. But, if this cannot be, then we must do the best thing which does lie in our power....

There are at this season, down at the church, vespers once a month, which I would like to attend, and lectures other nights; but even greater hindrances are here. It is in the evening, and our way is not all of it well lighted. We are on the Campus now, in our new house, and farther away than we have been before. ...

In the chapel near by is held an Episcopal service, conducted by one of the professors. Occasionally, we go in there. If they would not

spoil the service by their fast reading, lapping one part over the other till all the devotional element is taken out of it, I should go oftener. The officiating professor I like very much,- Prof. Babcock; and his wife is a most charming and excellent woman, herself the daughter of an Episcopalian clergyman.... Then, we belong there, at the chapel, I mean. It is our pleasure to be there. We all know each other, or we are familiar with each other's faces,- students and all, even if we do not know names. The chapel was built for us all. Good preaching is furnished us there, and it is home. Can you not see how it all is? The church in the town is a pretty, homelike one. I like it when I am there, but not the going. And I do not know the people, save the few I have mentioned, as I do those of the chapel. Certainly, it is the natural and right thing, it seems to me, to go there, when there is service. If we could only get down the hill comfortably, . . . I should like to go.

Mr. Allen writes good sermons. The last one I heard the last or last but one in December was most excellent. . . . He is a pleasant man to meet socially, and we know that he is a scholarly man, a fine scholar. ... In my call on a Unitarian professor's family, we talked of the church. They think in the winter quite a good many students go to the Unitarian church, and get good there. One told them the other day how much help he had had from Mr. Allen. They, the young people, are the ones most needing help, or at least who can do most good with it. . . . I met Mr. Allen at the lecture I attended, and had a pleasant talk with him. . . . I wish his wife and family were with him. All who met her were charmed. I was sick then, and did not see her at all. The people all like him personally, I think. . . . But they want him to live down in the town, and to belong to them and not to the hill.

I have thus thrown together all I know or hear. But I wish you yourself could come out and judge for yourself. A woman sees quicker than most men do how such a thing stands. . . . Cannot you come out by and by, after the pleasant weather comes? I wish you could. I hope I have not overwearied you.

GLEANINGS.

The editor of the new Agnostic Manual appears to have got into trouble with Prof. Huxley. He, the editor, had sold a whole edition of the Manual on account of a letter of the professor's which he had inserted, with the promise of him as a contributor. Prof. Huxley, as the papers say, now fixes upon the aforesaid editor "a vacant stare," and declares that he was not authorized to use his name in the periodical.

"The bitter cry of outcast London" echoed by our liberal orthodox exchange, the Christian World, has reached all classes; and we are glad to see that our earnest friend and co-worker, the