placing the college at an inconvenient distance from Cambridge, and a pretty site was chosen close to the long avenue west of the colleges, which is one of the most beautiful features of the place. The object of the founders was rather to provide residence, supervision, and instruction for female students, than to prescribe, as at Girton, a course of studies identical with those of undergraduates. Selected candidates were, at the same time, encouraged to compete in the Honor Examinations, with results as satisfactory as at Girton. In the first six years 22 Honors were gained in the various examinations; 3 in Mathematics, 4 in Classics, 5 in Moral Sciences, 4 in Natural Sciences, and 6 in History. Encouraged by these results, and by the demands made upon them by candidates for admission, the Association have now erected a second building, so that to gether about seventy students are housed. The arrangements seem to be on a more economical scale than at Girton, and single rooms are the rule. The charge for board and instruction is also less; that at Newnham being seventyfive guineas, while that at Girton is one hundred guineas, a year. In both colleges many advantages are offered to deserving students in the form of scholarships, and of other pecuniary assistance when required.

The social life of the students is not very different from that of undergraduates. There are the regular lectures in or outside the college, the recreation and meals in common, with considerable freedom allowed in the employment of their leisure. Too much praise cannot be given to those ladies directly responsible for the supervision of the students, and the success of this very novel institution in a place like Cambridge is mainly due to the tact and good sense of these managers. Considerable prejudice existed at first against the experiment, and failure was freely prophesied. If the chief characteristics of the students had been other than what they have been seen to be-steady and unobtrusive work-and if the trop de zèle which might have been unduly developed by the novelty of the situation had not been judiciously kept in hand, we may be sure that the two colleges would not have received so readily the recogni

tion of their merits from such a Conservative body as the University of Cambridge. The students have strictly maintained among themselves a wholesome public opinion-they have had the esprit de corps of pioneers-many, probably the majority, looked forward to educational careers, to which success at the University would readily lead; none, at any rate, were there, like so many young fellows at Oxford and Cambridge, almost avowedly idling some of the best years of their lives away. Whatever dangers may befall Girton and Newnham in the future, if success should bring with it its attendant evils-if, especially, it should ever become as fashionable for young ladies to go to college as it now is for young men there can at least be no doubt that all dangers have been successfully avoided hitherto. Mrs. Grundy, who is as powerful at Cambridge as elsewhere,. has even acquiesced in the fait accompli

That the course of training is healthy, is attested by the evidence of one of the chief physicians in Cambridge, who stated in a recent public discussion on the subject that he knew of no instance of harm to brain or body having occurred to any student who had distinguished herself in the University examinations, and that the chief evils caused to girls by the strain of mental work at home, when combined with social requirements, were in his opinion avoided by residence at the University. As far as can be observed within so short a time the subsequent careers of students, who have passed through Girton and Newnham, have been impressed for good by the training there received. Some of them are usefully employed in the education of others; some are busied quietly at home; many have married happily. All speak with affection of their college days, and are conscious of having derived from them wider sympathies and interests and a more extended knowledge than would otherwise have been open to them. This testimony is very valuable, as there must be many girls to whom Girton and Newnham may prove of equal service, and who may have the opportunity of availing themselves of the advantages they offer. Many of course have duties elsewhere, and especially at home; but there are others on whom no

Though the work thus entitled is described by its author in a graceful circumlocution as "the history of a brief but eventful career," it is quite obviously a life of Christ, written from the standpoint of one who chooses to regard him as simply one of the numerous teachers and enthusiasts who illustrate every period of the Jewish annals, and who in almost all ages have been the natural and familiar outcome of the peculiar conditions of oriental society. Dismissing in a few scornful phrases the apocryphal accounts" of Rabbi Jeshua's life composed by his followers within a century after his death," and so self-contradictory as to make it clear to the critical reader that the disciples mingled their own teaching with that of their master,' "" our author explains that he has based his own version on the chronicle of Simeon has Saddik, a companion of one of Rabbi Jeshua's first disciples.

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was

Simeon himself," says our author, an illiterate peasant, a man probably older than Rabbi Jeshua, but who survived him more than forty years, and retired before the fall of Jerusalem to the neighborhood of Gadara, east of the Jordan. The recollections of this aged puritan were recorded by one of his companions. The historical sequence of the events appears to have been carefully followed, and many of the maxims of Rabbi Jeshua are preserved, interspersed among descriptions of the main events of his short career. Thus, though scanty and imperfect, the information contained in this work appears to be genuine ; and it has evidently served as the original basis of the other accounts, for this reason, that in no case do they agree in any statement which contradicts one made by Simeon has Saddik. All the versions are in agreement when they follow that which may be considered to be the original, and, on the other hand, no two of the later versions are in accord concerning facts not noticed by Simeon. Thus we have the indication of genuineness in the one case and of fanciful elaboration in all the others, and our attention should be confined to those statements which have the best right to be considered truthful because they are found to be common to every version." Even the chronicle of Simeon has Saddik, however, cannot be fully accepted, because "the superstitious beliefs" of the age in which it was written find frequent expression in its pages. We must discount, as far as possible, "the idiosyncrasies of the writer," and strive to form some kind of idea of the "actual facts" which he relates.

According to the chronicle of Simeon, as

Jeshua was a Galilean peasant, converted to the tenets of the monastic sect of the Hasaya by the preaching of Hanan (John the Baptist), and initiated by the latter through the preliminary rite of ablution. By reason of the medical knowledge for which his sect was noted, the Rabbi Jeshua, after the period of retirement in the deserts was passed, gained a remarkable hold upon the ignorant and credulous peasantry, and his kindness to them and solicitude for their welfare caused him to be known among them as the " gentle Rabbi," and he was soon followed by a throng of devoted disciples." At last they and he, convinced that he was the promised Messiah, unfortunately went up to Jerusalem, where in less than two days he was caught in the toils of his enemies, hurried to crucifixion, and buried in a rock-sepulchre among the gardens outside the city, whence his body was mysteriously carried away, so that unto this day no man knows his burial-place. After his death, many legends were clustered round his name, and many marvellous acts and powers were attributed to him; but his doctrines were gradually worked up into the fabric of pagan theology and taught as Christianity by zealous apostles, while for upward of four centuries the slowly dwindling community of genuine Hasaya, to which Rabbi Jeshua belonged, lived peacefully and obscurely among the rich plateaux and deep gorges of Perea, awaiting the day of the Lord," which should come as a thief in the night; but which came not till they were extinct, nor has yet come.

In a closing chapter, which is full of trenchant satire, the author exposes what he regards as the sham Christianity of modern England. The substance and moral of this chapter is to be found in the statement that were Rabbi Jeshua to be re-born in the England of to-day it would probably be his fate to be imprisoned a vagabond and an impostor ;" and the author represents himself as searching in vain through the churches and society of London for any echoes of the teachings or traces of the influence of the great Galilean Rabbi.

as

It cannot be denied that the book is written with much ingenuity and literary skill, or that it abounds in striking passages of picturesque description; but it is greatly deficient in that serious and reverent spirit in which such a work should be written, if it is to be written at all. It is not possible now, even if it were desirable, to induce the world to contemplate the life of Christ from the purely secular point of view; and when the attempt is made to trick out a narrative composed from this point of view

drapery of likely to be

with imaginative flights and the fancy, an impression of levity is the result. BURIED ALIVE; OR, TEN YEARS OF PENAL SERVITUDE IN SIBERIA. By Fedor Dostoyeffsky. Translated from the Russian by Marie von Thilo. New York: Henry Holt & Co.

Precisely to what extent the facts narrated in this book are a record of actual events and observations, it would be difficult to say; but that they are at least based upon personal experience would be sufficiently proved by the book itself, even if we did not know from other sources that the author had been a member of the numerous class of Russian political convicts. There are touches here and there in the narrative-whole scenes, we might say-that are beyond the power of mere imagination to conceive; and while it is probable that the form and certain accessories of the story are inventions, yet the record as a whole has a force and intensity and directness that could come only from the fidelity with which it depicts real occurrences and actual persons.

Accepting it, then, as on the whole a trustworthy record, the book is one of the most painful ever written; there is scarcely another, indeed, that arouses in the reader so poignant a sense of the extent to which man's inhumanity to man" can be carried. There is some mitigation in the knowledge that the state of things represented belongs to a period some thirty or forty years back, and that since then a few of the more brutal features connected with flogging and prisonlife have been abolished; but the scars left upon the social body by such wounds cannot be eradicated in a generation, and it is easy to see that the degradation of the people which such treatment necessarily involved was far more serious than the mere suffering inflicted, cruel as that was in individual cases.

In reading the utterances and noting the deeds of the Nihilists, every one has been astonished as well as shocked by the frantic ferocity which they exhibit; they bewilder at the same time that they repel. We venture to think that M. Dostoyeffsky's book, while not directly touching upon the subject at all, yet throws a flood of light over it. For there is no law of human nature more certain than that the force of reaction when it comes will be precisely proportioned to the repression which preceded and provoked it. Inexorable as fate itself, immutable as the nature of man, is the great social law that brutal tyranny will arouse ferocious and vindictive reprisals.

In any event, the book is one that should be read. Regarded as a record of actual experience, it is thrillingly interesting. Regarded

as a story, it reveals a great and hitherto unknown artist.

THE OLD TESTAMENT IN THE JEWISH CHURCH. Twelve Lectures on Biblical Criticism. By W. Robertson Smith, M.A. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

In our review of "Scotch Sermons" in a recent number, we spoke of the evidence which they afforded of the extent to which the citadel of Scotch orthodoxy had been undermined by the scientific and critical spirit; and the book whose title stands at the head of this notice furnishes additional and striking testimony to the same fact. It will be remembered that Professor Robertson Smith was recently tried and condemned for heresy, and deprived of his chair in the University of Aberdeen, because of certain conclusions regarding the historical books of the Old Testament which he had expressed in articles contributed to the new edition of the

"

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'Encyclopædia Britannica." Shortly after this 'temporary victory" of his theological opponents in the church, he was invited by six hundred prominent Free Churchmen in Edinburgh and Glasgow to explain and define his position before the Scottish public; and the twelve lectures of which the present volume is composed were delivered in Edinburgh and Glasgow during the first three months of the current year before large audiences, which comprised a considerable portion of the culture and intelligence of the two cities.

The Lectures are printed substantially as they were delivered, and are designed for the intelligent public rather than for critics and students. "I have striven," says Professor Smith,

to make my exposition essentially popular in the legitimate sense of that word—that is, to present a continuous argument, resting at every point on valid historical evidence, and so framed that it can be followed by the ordinary English reader who is familiar with the Bible and accustomed to consecutive thought. There are some critical processes, he continues,

which cannot be explained without constant use of the Hebrew text; but I have tried to make all the main parts of the discussion independent of reference to these. Of course it is not possible for any sound argument to adopt in every case the renderings of the English Version. In important passages I have indicated the necessary corrections; but in general it is to be understood that, while I cite all texts by the English chapters and verses, I argue from the Hebrew.' For the benefit of students a number of notes have been appended, which complete and illustrate the details of the argument, and at the same time supply hints for further study.

The almost simultaneous appearance of the Revised Version of the New Testament ren

ders the present work especially timely for while Professor Smith deals exclusively with the Old Testament, yet what he has to say about the formation and history of the Canon, and about the various versions and translations, throws nearly as much light upon the New Testament history as on that of the Old. One entire lecture and part of another is devoted to "The Septuagint," and the same attention is given to the Canon. Another lecture deals with the Psalter, another with the Prophets, and still others with The Traditional Theory of the Old Testament History" and "The Law and the History of Israel before the Exile." Perhaps the most interesting, however, in view of Professor Smith's recent difficulties with his fellow-churchmen, are those on "The Pentateuch" and on The Deuteronomic Code and Levitical Law.' It should be said, however, that all are parts of one continnous exposition or argument, the aim of which is to show that "Biblical Criticism is not the

invention of modern scholars, but the legitimate interpretation of historical facts." COMPANION TO THE REVISED VERSION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. By Alex. Roberts, D.D. With American Supplement. New York: Cassell, Petter, Galpin & Co. "The object of this little work," to quote the preface, "is to explain to the English reader the general grounds of those departures from the Authorized Version which he will find in the Revised translation. Not one of these alterations has been made without what appeared to a majority of the Revisers an adequate reason. They are all to be traced to one or other of two causes-either to a change of the Greek text which it was found necessary to adopt, or to a change of translation which stricter fidelity to the original seemed to require." The greater portion of the work is due to Dr. Roberts, who was a member of the English Committee of Revision; but a supplement has been added to the American edition which explains the American appendix to the Revised Version and the relation of the American Committee to the whole work. Without the " Companion" the average reader would hardly be able to make out either what the Revisers have done or what considerations have influenced their work; and hence its utility and value can hardly be doubted. The present authorized edition" is very neatly and clearly printed.

FOREIGN LITERARY NOTES.

MR. W. J. ROLFE'S excellent editions of Shakspere's Plays, the School and College Series, are to be introduced into the English market.

A BENGAL lady, Maharanee Surnomoyee, has recently subscribed 8050 rupees for the endowment of scholarships for the encouragement of Sanskrit learning.

THE printing press of the Propaganda has just issued in an elegant form a collection of Latin hymns, written by Pope Leo XIII. in honor of two bishops and martyrs.

SHAKSPERE'S works are being rendered into the Malo-Russian language by a well-known writer in that dialect, M. Kulish, who has

already completed a translation of six of the plays.

THE other day, at an old book-stall in Paris, the discovery was made of a MS. commentary upon the De Anima of Aristotle by Théophile Corydalleus, a French grammarian of the seventeenth century.

DR. REICKE, of Königsberg, is engaged along with Dr. Sintenis, in collecting materials for a complete edition of Kant's correspondence. They have already got about six hundred letters to Kant, and a smaller number from him.

THE Japanese Government has just published a great dictionary of military and naval terms in five languages-Japanese, French, English, German, and Dutch. This is said to be the first Japanese dictionary arranged on the European plan. The compiler is Col. Kadumité.

MESSRS. MACMILLAN & Co. are about to publish a series of reading books upon the principles of agriculture, prepared by Prof. Tanner for use in elementary schools. "The Alphabet of the Principles of Agriculture" will be the first in the series, and will appear at a very early date.

THE whole of the last volume of M. Renan's Origines du Christianisme" is now in type. The author is at present busy with the huge index for the seven volumes. Before writing his history of the Jews up to the second exile, he intends to visit, if his health will permit, the Holy Land as well as Sinai.

M. JOSEPH HALÉVY is preparing an essay on the Sanskrit alphabet, which he believes to be based on the Greek alphabet. In a second part he is going to prove that the " Pânini," as well as the " Prâtiçakhya," refer in their quotations from the Veda" to a written copy of that book.

WE understand that the Rev. W B. Crickmer, of Beverley, is engaged on the "Greek Testament Englished," a translation in which he proposes to give the absolute value and force of each Greek word in the corresponding English equivalent, irrespective of its grammatical order. The work will be published at an early date by Mr. Elliot Stock.